Have you been told by your professor to use scholarly or peer-reviewed articles for your research paper? Wondering what that means and how to get them?
Peer-reviewed (or refereed) journals send submitted manuscripts to other experts in the same discipline so that they can assess the quality of the potential article before it’s accepted for publication.
Many article databases offer a check box that limits results to scholarly/peer-reviewed publications. However, the results may include book reviews, etc., that you would not want even though they were published in scholarly journals.
Look for the characteristics of a scholarly article, which are listed on the Library’s guide “Scholarly Journal vs. Popular Magazine Articles.” There’s a YouTube video from another library called “Magazines vs. Scholarly Journals” to view: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urCFhPJRhbI[/youtube]
You also can look up a publication’s title in UlrichsWeb, which describes journals, magazines, etc.
If in doubt, ask a librarian for help!
