Finding an opinion article using ProQuest Central

Finding an opinion piece might seem difficult at first. However, if you know where to look, you can save time.

How to start

For this task, we're going to concentrate on using the database ProQuest Central, a collection of around 40 databases from ProQuest that includes several news databases. Like all other library databases, this is linked to on our Databases A-Z Hub. 

Searching for articles can benefit from a few more steps than just entering keywords to search, and here we'll practice using ProQuest's filters to just look at editorials and commentaries.

When typing keywords into ProQuest databases, it's going to search the full text of every article has access to for matches and show you any articles with a match in the results list. To find an editorial, we first need to get some results up. Type in keywords related to your topic, then click Enter/Return on your keyboard or the "magnifying glass" button to see the results list.

Filtering results

In ProQuest Central, you'll find a wide mix of results from scholarly academic research papers to single white paper reports to news.  To limit to just seeing Editorials, Opinion pieces and Commentary, we need to use ProQuest's filters. 

The filters do what it sounds like - they filter out content you don't want. 

To find ProQuest's results lists filters, look for a column on the left of the screen labeled Narrow Results. Find the Narrow Results section now on your computer.

Note: On large monitors and screens the Narrow Results section will be on the left, on smaller screens it'll be below the results list.  

Now that you see the Narrow Results filters, follow these steps:
 

• In the Narrow Results list, click Document Type to see a list of options.  

• Click More >.

• In the pop-up window, select Editorial and Commentary.

• Click Apply.