Everett Library: Chemistry: Start

Chemistry Research

This guide will help students find, evaluate, and use materials (articles, books, and other media) for research in chemistry.

Deciding on a research topic can be difficult, but this doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.

The route you take to picking a topic depends on numerous factors, including:

The video below from NC State provides a helpful overview of the process of picking a research topic:

The resources below can be useful for developing background knowledge on a topic, which will help you decide a focus for your research:

CQ Researcher Online This link opens in a new window
Reports on issues shaping our world, with in-depth coverage of political and social issues, such as health, education, the environment, technology, and the U.S. economy.
Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
A collection of full-text database of reference ebooks, including encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauri, handbooks, readers’ guides, atlases, primary source materials, and image and video collections, selected for academic researchers.

Wikipedia
The world's largest openly available encyclopedia. Users worldwide can create and edit articles about all kinds of subjects. Wikipedia is helpful for getting an overview of a topic, finding additional sources of info, and discovering related topics. Always critically evaluate the information you find on Wikipedia, and rely on additional sources to cite in your own research.