The Steps to Researching and Writing a Scholarly Article: Continuing Your Research

Research is a recursive process. You may find during your research or writing that a particular area needs more research and that is okay.

Organizing your research will make the process easier. Make sure to use a research log to track your searching.

Feel comfortable asking for help. Faculty members and reference librarians are useful resources.

What types of sources will you need? Well that depends on what you are writing about. Scholarly legal articles often include other scholarly articles, treatises, news, and primary sources such as cases, statutes, and regulations.

Before doing any additional searching, read your preemption materials. The materials that you have gathered in your preemption searching should have provided you with many materials including some that set out the background or history of your topic. Your gathered materials may also provide citations to other resources you will want to read.

Once you have read your preemption materials, you have a number of methods for expanding your research. 

1. You can search for materials cited in your preemption materials including cited cases, statutes, regulations, and any other primary source materials.
2. You can locate additional books, including treatises, using the Maloney Library Catalog.
3. You can locate additional articles that have cited back to your preemption materials using Google Scholar, Lexis Advance, or Westlaw.
4. You may also want to modify the searches you ran in your preemption check to locate more articles in legal and non-legal article databases.

1. It is always easiest to start primary source research with a citation.
2. When you have a statute, use an annotated code (Westlaw or Lexis) to locate related cases, regulations, and secondary sources.
3. When you have a case, use a citator (KeyCite or Shepard's) to locate additional related cases and secondary materials.
4. When you have a case, use Westlaw Key Numbers to locate additional related cases.
5. To locate legislative history materials, use one of the library's paid databases such as ProQuest Legislative Insight to locate a compiled legislative history.
6. To locate regulatory materials, visit the agency website.