It will give you the information you need to find the article:
Citation: Although the database may not contain the full text of the article itself, the citation will provide the information that you need to find the article.
Citations identify published information in order to locate that item again. Citations of articles often include the author, title, magazine or journal name, page numbers, a DOI (digital object identifier), and other publication information. Citations of Web documents also include a URL and the date the information was accessed.
The list of the sources you used when researching your paper is called a bibliography. These sources are listed in citation format and follow an established style, such as MLA (Modern Language Association), APA (American Psychological Association) or Chicago Manual of Style. The bibliography allows others who read your work to verify facts or research the same information more easily.
Abstract: It may also include an abstract or summary of the article’s content. Reading the abstract, you can quickly see if the article will be useful for your topic.
The abstract of an article is a brief summary of its contents. Abstracts can save you time by helping you identify the best articles on your topic. For example:
Author(s): Scully, Malcolm G.
Title: Taking the pulse of the Kalamazoo
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education 47, no. 38 (Jun 1, 2001): p. B16
Abstract: Scully discusses the work by Jay C. Means, Charles F. Ides, and their colleagues at Western Michigan University to reclaim the Kalamazoo River. They are monitoring how contaminants flow through the river’s watershed and are using sophisticated genetic techniques to study the effects of the contaminants on the organisms–including humans–that live in and around the river.
Full Text: Sometimes a database will link you to the complete text of the article. If you do not see a Full Text PDF or Full Text html link, you can still find the article in other ways. One option is to look for the Search For Full Text link in the article record. This link will take you into another database in order to connect you to the full text of the article.
The complete electronic text of an article is called the full text. Some databases, like Academic OneFile and Academic Search Premier, provide entire articles online. Most full-text articles include any pictures or graphs that were published in the print version. Sometimes, however, only the text is available. Many full-text articles have a PDF version that you can access which serves as a scanned copy of the article as it was originally published.
