Scholarly Article Databases
Multidisciplinary
- 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.
- Summon This link opens in a new windowIn addition to books, Summon can also help find scholarly articles, newspaper articles, digital videos or images, etc.
Tip: Summon allows you to filter your results, such as only scholarly and peer-reviewed sources.
- 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.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowScholarly literature in the sciences, health and medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities and proceedings of international conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions. Includes cited reference searching across many databases.
- Google ScholarSearches specifically for scholarly materials such as journal articles, research reports, dissertations and theses, and article preprints (an article before it is in its final publisher PDF form).
Disciplinary
- Communication & Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window
Scholarly journal and trade magazine articles on all aspects of communication, rhetoric, journalism, film and television studies.
- PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
Indexes scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences; covers journals, books, reviews, and dissertations. Dates of coverage: 1880s–present.
- SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new windowProvides full text of some journal articles, and indexing and abstracts for journals, books and conference papers. Covers all sub-fields of sociology, including criminology, gender, marriage & family studies, social work, social psychology, addictions, violence, and more.
Scholarly and Peer-Reviewed Sources
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”).
Parts of a Scholarly Article
In the Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, etc.) and Social Sciences (Psychology, Sociology, etc.), scholarly articles in academic journals will often share a similar structure. Knowing the structure can help you to make sense of the article and find key pieces of information.
|
Abstract |
Brief summary of the article. |
| Introduction | States the topic, purpose, and argument of the article. |
| Methods | Mentions steps taken to support argument of the article. |
| Results/Findings | Shares results of the research. |
| Discussion | Analyzes and talks about the findings of the research. |
| Conclusion | Synthesizes the article's findings and argument. |
| References | List of cited sources. |