A periodical is a publication that appears at regular intervals—for example, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. These publications include scholarly journals and news and topical-interest magazines. Often, the most credible information on your speech topic will come from articles in scholarly journals, generally written by people with expertise on a subject. Articles in such journals are subjected to peer review—that is, an editor decides to publish only articles that are approved by other experts in the field and that meet the publication’s other requirements. In contrast, newsmagazines are particularly helpful for speeches on current events.

The following strategies will help you locate appropriate periodicals.

Consult General Periodical Indexes. General periodical indexes list articles on a wide variety of topics. Traditionally, these resources were available in bound volumes. Now most college and public libraries have subscriptions to online indexes.

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Online indexes are particularly helpful because they often include a full-text source for each entry—a link to the complete text of the article in question. When they do not provide the full text, indexes often supply an abstract, or a summary of the article’s contents. The abstract can help you assess whether the article would be useful for your speech. These indexes also provide other helpful utilities, such as the proper citation formats for the articles you find. Representative examples of online indexes that can be used to research a wide variety of speech topics include the following:

Use Specialized Periodical Indexes. Specialized periodical indexes focus on specific subject areas and are increasingly available online. Library Web sites often list available indexes and provide you with a link. These resources are available for a wide range of topics, as can be seen by the following sample list: AGRICOLA (agriculture), Art Full Text, Communication and Mass Media Complete, Criminal Justice Abstracts, Gender Watch, Historical Abstracts, MEDLINE (medical journals), PsycArticles, and Science Online.

Ask Your Reference Librarian for Help. Although you may consider research a solitary activity, reference librarians can be a great asset. As we mentioned earlier, these trained professionals can help you track down a book or periodical or even order it for you through inter-library loan if it’s not immediately available. Don’t be afraid to ask them for help.