Visit your academic institution library's website if you are a student or staff member. The website usually will give you the option of using guided keyword searching to find materials by subject or topic. For example, if you are looking for research articles on stem cell research, enter that as the keyword in an article search box to generate a list of potential scholarly journals that will give you the information you need. The library site needs to have a database that indexes scholarly journals and focuses on these publications instead of news articles or popular magazines.
Take a trip to your school library and peruse the scholarly journals section. A librarian also can help you find scholarly journals containing appropriate research articles, which can include American Economic Review or the Journal of the American Medical Association, for example. To confirm that the source of your research articles is a scholarly journal, make sure the authors are industry scholars who are affiliated with organizations such as think tanks and universities. Also, make sure the journal cites sources, often in the form of a bibliography, and that these journals are peer-reviewed--or approved by several other experts in the field.
Go to your local public library or visit the website of the library to find research articles in scholarly journals. Access to these libraries' reference materials is free to the public. This is especially suitable if you are not a student or staff member at a particular academic institution but are a professional looking for research articles for job-related education purposes, for example. Many college libraries require you to have a faculty, student or staff personal identification number to access their information online.
Go to an online research article search site such as Highbeam.com or Questia.com. Such online reference services give students and business professionals access to thousands of research articles, allowing you to search for articles based on subject categories. Some of these services also will offer you a free trial period.
Identify professional organizations or associations that will direct you to the type of online research articles you need. For example, if you are interested in looking at medical research articles, visit sites such as PubMed.gov through the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Meanwhile, if you want information about elementary education, visit the website of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which offers sources for a variety of related research articles. Use an online search engine to type in possible association keywords that will produce the results you are seeking.