Academic Research Skills Guide

In research, we often have to support a course of action, method of research, or decision based on previous research, published guidelines, or best practices. Best practices can be found in published literature but can also be found online through non-traditional sources or "grey literature" (which comes from outlets for which publishing is not their primary function). There are several ways to find guidelines and best practices, and this guide will help you get started. 

The sites you choose to use will depend on your field of study. Here are a few examples:

Google is a useful tool to search for guidelines on the web. To browse for guidelines published by organizations (such as NGOs) or the Canadian federal government, add site:org or site:gc.ca to your search. 

To browse guidelines published by universities or research institutions in the United States, add site:edu to your search. 

While there is no domain suffix to limit to Canadian universities, you can search using this Google custom search of Canadian university websites created by Mount Royal University.

Other useful Google searching tips: 

• Browse by file type (filetype:pdf). A longer list of Google domains and file types is available here
• Search between specific dates using Tools (e.g., 1980..2010)
• Search using another country's Google. Here is a full list of Google search engines 
• Try using a different search engine. There are many!

You can also find guidelines and best practices in published academic research. These articles or published papers are available in Novanet, library databases, and Google Scholar. To find a full list of databases and filter by subject, check out the A-Z Databases list. 

This is what a search might look like in a ProQuest database where guidelines OR "best practices" appear in the abstract as an important term.