Online databases supply you with citations for articles that have been written on a topic.

Basic citation information includes:

• Author’s name
• Article title
• Journal or magazine title
• Volume/issue
• Page numbers
• Date
• Amount of Pages

Some databases also include an abstract (short summary) of each article. Abstracts can help you determine whether or not an article will be useful for your research, but they would not be used as a substitute for the entire article.

Some databases include the full text of the articles. Full text articles are the same articles that you would find in the copyrighted print version of the journal or magazine.

Full text articles come in two formats, HTML and PDF. Articles in HTML format look like web pages and can be emailed, saved to a disk, or printed. Articles in PDF format look like a photograph of the print version of the article. They also can be saved to disk or printed.