Academic Research Pro-Tips
Scholarly & Peer-reviewed Articles
A scholarly article is one written by an expert for other experts. A peer-reviewed article is a scholarly article which has been reviewed and approved by a group of experts (the author's peers).
Some tips for identifying scholarly articles:
- Most scholarly articles are published in academic journals or edited collections. Articles from magazines, trade journals, or newspapers are not scholarly.
- Scholarly articles will always include citations and a bibliography. Other articles generally include few or no citations, and will include only a brief bibliography or notes section if any at all.
- Not all resources with citations are scholarly (for example, Wikipedia is not).
- If you're not sure about a source, check for information like: the author's name/credentials; the publication it appears in or the publisher; or the intended audience.
- Book reviews and editorials are never scholarly, even when published in scholarly journals.
Article Search Tips
- Use keywords instead of phrases. See if you can express each part of your topic in one or two words. Think of words that are likely to be used as subject keywords or titles.
- Use "quotes to indicate phrases." Use AND, OR, to build a more complicated search.
- Specific names, events, organizations, etc. usually make for solid keywords when used in combination with broader concepts.
- If your keywords aren’t working, think of synonyms or other ways of phrasing your topic and try those. Also remember alternate spellings. Or, try a less-specific search, with fewer or broader keywords.
Suggested....
Sociology & Anthropology
- Anthrosource This link opens in a new window
Journal articles published by the American Anthropologial Association (AAA).
- SocINDEX This link opens in a new window
Journal articles, and citations for books, conference proceedings, and other resources, in the field of sociology.
- Scopus This link opens in a new window
Citations and abstracts for journals, books, and conference proceedings, primarily in the natural and social sciences.
History
- Africa Bibliography This link opens in a new window
Citations and abstracts for journal articles in African studies, searchable by region, country and subject.
- Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Journal articles, book chapters and magazines about the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450-present.
- JSTOR Arts & Sciences This link opens in a new window
Journal articles in almost every subject area, including some historical articles back to the 17th century.
Scholarly Journals
In addition to the research databases, you can use the Libraries' E-Journals Search to look for articles in specific journals. This can be a useful strategy when:
- Your professor has recommended specific journals that address your topic;
- You notice that the same journals come up frequently while doing your research;
- You have a citation for a specific article that you would like to read (see the Access Options tab for more).
Just make sure not to rely too much on one or two specific journals. To get the broadest perspective possible on your topic, it's best practice to use multiple sources.
Journals focused on Africa:
Anthropology Journals:
Databases focused on a particular subject area (often called subject or subject-specific databases) often come with special features geared towards the needs of that subject area.
One such tool can be found in the Historical Abstracts database. Most databases will allow you to search for articles published within a certain time-frame, but this is not as useful if you are trying to locate information on a specific historical era -- you won't be looking for (secondary) sources published in the 1800s!
These databases include Historical Period information for each article, allowing you to search for articles about a specific time period.
Geographic Searches
The database Africa Bibliography allows you to look for research articles based on the region and/or country to which they pertain. These characteristics are selected from 'controlled' drop-down lists, meaning that you know there will be an exact match.
