For both your Social Action Reflection and Issues and Solutions paper, you are required to cite peer reviewed (also known as scholarly) research articles.
For an overview of how to identify a peer reviewed article, please refer to our handout on five questions you can ask.
Warning: Some search tools offer the option to limit your results to peer reviewed research articles. Unfortunately, this limit is not completely accurate, and some types of articles that do not go through the peer review process can slip through such as news stories, letters to the editor and editorials published in journals. Compare the full text of the articles you find with the handout to ensure you are choosing sources appropriate for your paper.
Example of a peer reviewed research article: Health Care for All: Undocumented Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Alberta, Canada—A Scoping Review
Examples of items found in journals that most professors would not accept as peer reviewed articles:
Finding the right search words can be critical to the success of your search.
Here are some things to consider:
1. Are you using the terminology that an expert in the field would use?
Take a look at your search results, and see if there are particular words in the titles or subject headings of the results that you could add to your search to broaden the results.
2. Is there more than one way to spell the word?
e.g. globalization OR globalisation
e.g. healthcare OR "health care"
3. Are there any synonyms for my search word?
e.g. "female circumcision" OR "genital mutilation"
e.g. "organized crime" OR gangs
4. Include the full word/phrase along with the abbreviation or acronym in your search to find the most results
WHO OR "World Health Organization"
GATS OR "General Agreement on Trade in Services"
Do not type sentences into the search box! Only use the key terms you have identified.
Use quotation marks "" to search for a particular phrase e.g. "temporary foreign worker"
An asterisk (*) means I don't care how it ends e.g. canad*
Use the Peer Reviewed limit (Warning: This limit is not perfect, so it is still your responsibility to ensure that the article you have chosen is appropriate for your assignment)
The advanced search option gives you a more user friendly way to build your search
Do not type sentences into the search box! Google is looking for a source that contains every word you type in the search box, so focus on what is most important.
Use quotation marks "" to search for a particular phrase e.g. "temporary foreign worker"
You can exclude particular words from your search by using a minus sign e.g. medical tourism -mexico will exclude results mentioning Mexico.
Use Google's Site Search to search specific websites:
To search for the terms globalization and health in the World Health Organization's website (who.int):
Other possible searches:
You may have access to documentaries through subscription streaming services, but here are a few additional options that are free to access.
When browsing documentaries:
Kanopy (Available to Calgary Public Library members)
WARNING - Some news articles may only be free to read for a short time. Make sure you save a copy of the article you have selected (e.g. print to a pdf file). Also, be sure you are selecting a newspaper, rather than other types of media like magazines or broadcast news websites.
1. If you don't recognize the publication the article appears in, do some additional research to ensure that it is a legitimate news source. Most major newspapers or magazines have a Wikipedia page that outlines their history.
2. Use the minus sign to exclude words from your search. For example, you may want to exclude newswires from your search results - often they are just press releases from organizations without context or criticism.
4. Use the advanced search to limit your search to a particular news website or to a date range. Click on the arrow at the far right of the search box to expand the menu.
You can browse particular newspaper websites for something that catches your eye. Don't limit your search to the health sections of papers - many stories with health implications appear along with general news and political coverage.
Some newspapers may lean a particular way on the political spectrum (e.g. more conservative or more liberal). Keep this is mind as you read the stories.
If you are unable to read a story because it is reserved for subscribers, in many cases the Library still has access. Go to the Library website and select Journals in the search bar. Search for the title of the newspaper or magazine
If we subscribe, you will see an option to access the paper online. You can browse by date or search for the title of the article, although sometimes the title changes slightly from when the article was originally published.
Examples of Canadian newspapers
Examples of international newspapers
Use the advanced features of our news databases to limit your results to editorials.
Canadian Newsstream contains full text coverage from major Canadian newspapers.
In Canadian Newsstream, select Advanced Search.
Type in your search terms. The asterisk * (e.g. worker*) looks for different endings for a word. In this case, it will find worker or workers. Quotation marks (e.g. "foreign temporary") will search for those terms as an exact phrase. The word OR between search terms (e.g. migrant OR "temporary foreign") says that if either term is used you are interested in that source. Limit to full text and select a date range.
Before you hit search, scroll down until you see the source, document and language limits. Select newspapers and editorial. Hit search.
The following APA resources will help you cite in-text, create a reference list, and format your paper.
