What is a Scholarly Article?
Both scholarly and peer-reviewed articles are written by experts in academic or professional fields. Scholarly articles are published in journals for specific academic disciplines. Many scholarly journals are also peer-reviewed.
Peer-reviewed articles are submitted to reviewers who are experts in the field. Because the reviewers specialize in the same scholarly area as the author, they are considered the author’s peers (hence “peer review”).
Both scholarly and peer-reviewed articles are excellent places to find what has been studied or researched on a topic, as well as find references to additional relevant sources of information.
Finding Full Text
Many databases offered on the library's website include the full text of articles. Click on the pdf or html icon to download the article.
If full text is not available, click the Find It or 360 Link icons to see if there is access from another source. Look for:
or 
displayed for each item in the databases offered from the library's website. In Google Scholar, look for Find Full Text @ Oberlin. Access at publisher's websites is generally limited to subscribers.
Full-text is not always accessible for immediate download. The 360 Link may lead to an intermediary page that offers access through Interlibrary loan. If you have trouble, consult library staff.
Databases
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary - good for nearly all subjects. Scholarly and trade journals, popular magazines, newspapers, conference proceedings, book reviews, and more.
- Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Index to thousands of academic journals covering world history (excluding the US and Canada) from 1450 to present, in over 40 languages, with full-text available. Dates of Coverage: 1955 to date
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowScholarly journal archive for the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences; current issues (usually the last 2-5 years) are not digitized by JSTOR and may be obtained elsewhere.
Search Techniques
| Concept | Explanation | Example |
| Phrase search (quotes required) |
search for an exact phrase (most, but not all, databases use quotation marks) | “death penalty” “standardized test” “reality TV” |
| Boolean logic (for keyword searching) | use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) for more precise searching |
See following examples |
| AND | search for records that have all of the words (narrows the search) |
race and poverty drug use and educational attainment |
| OR | search for records that have any of the words (broadens the search) |
homosexual or gay or lesbian or queer china or japan or korea |
| NOT | exclude records that have the word (narrows the search) | advertising not (TV or television) |
| Truncation | search for a root word with any ending (most, but not all, databases use an asterisk *) | adolescen* [finds adolescent, adolescents, adolescence] |