In fact, a fundamental job of scholars is to know what is being published in their field in the known and respected sources that are read by most people in the field. In many countries, it is part of graduate and postgraduate studies to learn, with the help of professors, exactly which journals and other sources those are, to read them consistently, and to model one’s own work after what is being published in them. Since English became the primary language of international scholarly publishing, this has been a huge challenge to scholars in some countries and academic traditions who now want to publish internationally. It comes along with the challenge (for everyone) of the number and type of sources constantly increasing because of the Internet.

Some tips for your search

1) Everything depends on knowing and utilizing the right key words in English (and their English spelling)—it’s crucial to pay attention to key words in sources that you find and use them in searches, and try searching as many key words as you can think of to make sure that you don’t miss information that is out there. You can also use the advanced search feature in many sites to refine your searches.

2) The TSU Research Library’s online site www.lib.tsu.ru provides many, many sources of journals and articles. Be sure to see the item here on this site about using the TSU Library online, and spend as much time as possible getting to know everything there that may be useful to you.

3) On Scopus and elsewhere, you can find not only the abstracts of articles but also the references and where they were published; other works by same author and where they were published; and where the article has been cited. All of these can lead to more information and also to knowing which journals are the most relevant. Many full-length articles are available through the Library’s subscriptions (or on Scopus) and you can ask a librarian if you have any difficulty getting one that you think is worthwhile for you to read in full. Librarians may also be able to help you locate books, even from other libraries.

4) Look at references to see what is considered current in your field—generally, articles should be in the last 5–10 years, less in some fields (and in some fields it may be more). That’s not because the older ones are not important, but because the newer ones are considered to refer back to them. However, there may be some seminal works that you may want to read and that later might need to be cited directly.

5) Be really sure not to read or include anything from predatory (fake) "journal" websites—be sure to see the item about that in the Choosing a Target Journal(s) section of this site. If you use Google Scholar, be aware that those “articles” can be there too, as well as in Scopus and sites like academia.edu. Items from the fake journals are not peer-reviewed or considered scientific, and should never be included in research or references or it will spoil the article and its publishability.  There are many thousands of them, and no matter how interesting the topic might seem, it's necessary to carefully check the source of any article that is not from one of the very well-known publishers (Elsevier, Springer, and four or five others). (See the attachment in this site, Spotting predatory (fake) "journals", in the section Choosing a target journal.)

6) Be aware that if you read a work that has been translated into Russian from its original English, it is considered a secondary source that is not as strong as the primary source (the original). You will be citing the translation, not the original, and you will not be able to quote from it directly unless the quote comes from the original (not a retranslation).

7) If you read them carefully, abstracts are a good way to learn about the content of articles and choose which ones that are worthwhile or necessary to read in full and possibly use as references. But abstracts may not be cited, the article or other material must be read in full to cite it.)

The number of references that may be used that are not in English will depend on the topic of the article and the journal. If you do review sources that are in Russian or another language, check your target journal’s practices about how many non-English sources are typically cited. (Because English is the international academic language, anything that is not in it could be considered less accessible to international readers.) 

See the attachment here, Use of the TSU Research Library, Finding and Reviewing Journals

This document also includes information on how to make sure that the journal you are looking at is currently included in Scopus or Web of Science (which in some cases is not simple but should always be done for your article to be publishable).

A tip on organizing

As noted, you will not be using everything that you find as references in your article—later you will be making choices of what is most important to include in your analysis. But you need to know what you’ve looked at. It’s very useful to use a bibliography manager such as EndNote, Mendeley, or Zotero to keep track of the material that you find, select from it later, and then have the information you will need for your references and format it easily. More information about these is at http://www.lib.tsu.ru/ru/bibl-managers

Bottom line: Your goal is that when your article has been submitted, the editor or the peer reviewer does not say, “This research has already been done!” or, “Why didn’t you include so-and-so’s work that is so important in this area?”— you must never be surprised by something that you did not know existed!  And, your references are the foundation of your article, the explanation for why you did your own research to add to knowledge, not something to think about only after the article is written.