Subject-specific guides are research guides built tightly around a single field — or even a single course — offering specialised databases, the field’s key authors and journals, and its particular conventions. Where a general guide gives breadth, these give the depth that serious work in a discipline needs.

A general “science” guide is a fine starting point. But a guide built just for, say, public health or African literature can go much further — pointing you to the niche databases, the seminal authors, and the unwritten norms that only an insider would know. As your work deepens, these focused guides become your best companions.

What depth buys you

• Specialised databases — the field-specific resources a general guide has no room to list.
• The names that matter — the key authors, landmark studies, and core journals of the discipline.
• Field conventions — the right terminology, the expected citation style, how the discipline actually works.
• Sometimes, course-level focus — guides made for a specific subject of study, aligned to what you’re actually doing.

Match the guide to your depth

The skill is matching the guide to where you are: a general guide to begin and get oriented, a subject-specific one as your questions sharpen and your work goes deeper. Knowing when to graduate from one to the other is a mark of a maturing researcher.

🔗 Try it on FRELIP: guides.frelip.org — explore subject-specific guides

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