Finding scholarly information for research papers.

Many classes will require you to write a scholarly research paper. Here are some important issues to consider when evaluating information for scholarly research.

What is scholarly information and how do you identify this type of information?

Authority – Is the information authored by experts with credentials and /or scholarly affiliations? Look for Author information such as advanced degrees and university affiliation.

Publication – How is the information published? A magazine is slick and glossy with many advertisements. Magazine articles are just a few pages. There is little author information in magazines. Peer-reviewed journals are not slick and have few advertisements. The articles tend to be long with tables, graphs, and data. The article will have several sections such as literature review, methodology, results and conclusions. Does the article have a bibliography, endnotes or footnotes? Almost all scholarly publications (e.g. books and articles) will have citations. For this reason it is important that you cite your own sources in a scholarly fashion.

Source -Some of the best sources for scholarly information are:
Peer-Reviewed Journals (e.g. ELH, Peabody Journal of Education, Journal of the History of Ideas)
Books
Theses/Dissertations
Statistical Data Sets (e.g. Statistical Abstract of the United States)

Less Scholarly Sources
Some sources that are less scholarly and do not have as much high quality academic information should be evaluated independently on the basis of authority, publication, and source.

Magazines – People, Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, etc.
Newspapers- New York Times, Wall Street Journal
No Author- Documents that you cannot attribute to an author
Written by non-experts- Papers written by non-experts such as other students

Finding Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
One of the best sources for scholarly information is the peer-reviewed journal. There are several places you can find a list of peer-reviewed journals. Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, Volume 5 (call number R Z6941.U5 2003 v.5) has a list of peer-reviewed journals. Lists of peer-reviewed periodicals can also be found in the Social Sciences Index and the Humanities Index. The library has both paper and electronic journals.

Using Electronic Databases to find scholarly Articles
The university has access to several databases that contain peer-reviewed, scholarly articles. Two of these, Academic Search Premier and General OneFile, are good places to start your research. To select peer-reviewed articles in General OneFile click on "more search options". Then check the "to peer-reviewed publications" on the search page as seen below. You can also limit the search to retrieve only full-text articles.