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 generally 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. Almost all scholarly publications (e.g. books and articles) will have citations including a bibliography, endnotes or footnotes. 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 (English Literary History), Peabody Journal of Education, Journal of the History of Ideas)

Books

Theses/Dissertations

Statistical Data Sets (e.g. Statistical Abstract of the United States, Call #R/HA202.U5)

 

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 (through Lexis-Nexis)
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 (located in Periodicals Alcove on the main floor). 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 OneFile and Academic Source Premier, are good places to start your research. To select peer-reviewed articles in Academic OneFile, check the "to peer-reviewed publications" box on the search page as seen below. You can also limit the search to retrieve only full-text articles.

Academic Source Premier also allows you to select only scholarly articles by clicking on the "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals." The choices for Academic Search Premier are almost identical to the choices for Academic OneFile. By selecting this option you can eliminate many of the non-scholarly magazine articles; nevertheless, this method is not foolproof. Once you have found a potential article you still need to evaluate it. The information retrieval system cannot evaluate the scholarship and relevance of articles.

 

Last updated August 2010