Self-Help

How do I find and use scholarly/peer-reviewed sources on my topic?

Quick steps:

1. From the library home page, type your search words into the OneSearch search box in upper left.
2. On the results page, in the upper left, click on the limit option for "in Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Journals Only."
3. The results display will refresh and only show those from scholarly journals.
4. In other library search tools (EBSCOHost, ProQuest, etc. look for a similar limit option). JSTOR contains all scholarly journals, but doesn't have anything newer than 3 years ago..

IMPORTANT (especially if you can't find articles on your topic):

• Scholarly/peer-reviewed journal articles are aimed at expert audiences (they are not aimed at students). They also need to contain original research.  As a result, they tend to be very narrow in focus (more narrow than typical student paper topics). Translation: You may not find any articles that neatly summarize your broader topic. This is ok and expected. Instead, you may need to find several articles that cover smaller parts of your topic and stitch that information together into a broader whole. Example: for a paper on bullying in schools, articles found will have titles like: Are states winning the fight? Evidence on the impact of state laws on bullying in schools, or Victims of Bullying in Schools. But this is ok! Scholarly research often involves taking details from more focused studies and combining them to discuss the broader issues. You could also consider narrowing the focus of your topic so that articles you find are more relevant.
• Because scholarly articles are so narrow in focus and use lots of technical/specialized jargon, you may find yourself struggling to understand them or see how they can help you. This is common to most students. To more effectively read and use scholarly sources, you may need to put in a little more work:
  • Scan through a Wikipedia article on your topic - this will give you a history and scope of the topic and a better understanding of terminology to understand the scholarly reading.
  • As you read the scholarly article, jot down notes and write your thoughts (rather than just highlighting text). This is the MOST IMPORTANT part of using scholarly articles and learning in general! 
• Books can also be scholarly (often called 'scholarly monographs' because they are written by and for scholars, but they do not generally go through a peer-review process)! There is no easy limit option for this, but you can most effectively search for available ebooks via our EBook Central database. When looking over the content of a book, if you see lots of in-text citations within chapters, more than likely it is scholarly in nature.