Often your professor may ask you for articles from a scholarly, peer reviewed, or refereed journals for your research paper.

But, how do you identify and find these type of articles?

This presentation will help you answer those questions.

The purpose of a scholarly article is to:

Inform
Report
Present original research or experimentation

A scholarly article can have one or several (sometimes up to ten) authors. They are experts in the fields with significant knowledge in the subject area.

Scholarly articles will have quotations and intext citations within the body of the article. Sources can be cited in a variety of ways:

Footnotes
Endnotes
Bibliographies
Reference list at the end of the paper

The writing style of scholarly articles can be formal or semi-formal. Authors will use scholarly language; including technical or specialized language (jargon).

Terminology of the discipline
Jargon
Language of the discipline
Formal scholarly language
Complex writing style

Scholarly articles contain limited graphics, usually in black and white. Some types include:

Graphs
Charts
Tables
Formulas
Photographs related to the research

Advertising is often not present in scholarly journals. If it is found, it is in minimal amounts (usually selective ads from the organization)

Scholarly articles are published by:

Professional organizations
University or scholarly presses

In order to be published, articles go through a strict review process by peers within the discipline.

This means that the author submits the article draft to the journal editor, who then submits it to a review committee (made up of other professionals in the same field) who read the article and checks it for clarity, accuracy and appropriate methodology (among other things).

If the article is approved by the committee it is published in the journal.

If not, the draft is sent back to the author for revisions. This process can take months, sometime years, to complete.

Using this type of resource lend credibility to your ideas and opinions.

Usually, professors will require the use of this type of article for assignments.

The following are examples of scholarly journals:

Journal of Clinical Child Psychology
American Journal of Nursing
Journal of Computer Information Systems
Social Psychology Quarterly

Why can't I Google them?

There is usually a cost associated with the retrieval of scholarly articles. This is due to the publisher; since they are professional organizations a subscription or membership in the organization is required to read the complete article.

Accessing scholarly articles through the library's databases is FREE.

When searching the databases look for a checkbox titled: PEER REVIEWED.

Click on this check box BEFORE starting your search to limit your results to this type of publication.

Tutorial:
http://goo.gl/1Mw8a6