GNED 1101 - S. Fernando - General Education - MRU Library Website at Mount Royal University

How Do I Identify a Scholarly, Peer Reviewed Article?

Characteristics of a Peer Reviewed Scholarly Article

Author or authors are experts in their field. It will list the institution/research institute that they are affiliated with e.g. Mount Royal University
Article appears in a publication that employs peer review to ensure the quality of the articles it publishes. This is usually indicated on the journal homepage or you can refer to Ulrich's Directory where journals with peer review are indicated with a striped referee shirt next to the title
The title will be very specific, clearly identifying the research question the article is exploring
The intended audience is other experts in the field, so the language used may include lots of jargon or advanced terminology. Give yourself extra time to read the article for this reason.
The article itself will be long (more than 2 pages)
Outside sources of information are clearly cited throughout (you should expect to see lots of references)

Examples of Peer Reviewed Scholarly Articles

Evaluating Sources for Credibility

Framework for Evaluating Sources
Strengths and Weaknesses of Common Sources

When evaluating a source for its reliability and usefulness, consider the following questions. Note: It is often not enough to look on the source itself for the answers to these questions - you may need to fact check information using other trusted sources.

Scholarly Peer Reviewed Journal Articles (example)

Strengths: often based on research findings or extensive review, written by experts, reviewed by experts (peer reviewed), provides evidence

Weaknesses: Sometimes written using discipline-specific language or terminology, hard to understand

Encyclopedias (example)

Strengths: short, contains background information on a topic, normally a great starting point when you are just learning about a topic

Weaknesses: too short, print encyclopedias are out of date quickly, Wikipedia has reliability issues

Books (example of a scholarly book)

Strengths: Provides an in-depth investigation into a topic

Weaknesses: too long, sometimes hard to tell whether it is scholarly

Media Sources (news, online magazine articles)

Strengths: Good for current information

Weaknesses: Sometimes biased, sometimes written to entertain, often not written by experts

Websites & Social Media

Strengths: Highly accessible, includes government info or information from non-governmental organizations like the World Health Organization

Weaknesses: It is hard to assess credibility and reliability...anyone can post online or create a website

Library Search

Things to remember when using Library Search:

Sign in to save searches, items, and to request materials.
Use the pin icon to save books and articles.
Use the filters on the right. You will use Peer Reviewed, Availability, Resource Type, and Date filters most often.
Some items won't be available. You can request unavailable items using interlibrary loan.
When viewing an item record, scroll down to the Get It or Full-Text section to get the item.

You can search in a way to combine or omit different terms by telling the search engine exactly what you want…this can help you save some time (and frustration!)

Use quotation marks to keep phrases together - "human rabies"
Use AND to combine search terms - prevention AND alzheimer
Use OR to connect two or more similar terms - "chicken pox" OR varicella
Use wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol - develop*

Search PubMed

PubMed is the primary research tool for finding research articles in the health sciences. It offers additional features to help you narrow your search.

Clinical study limit - may be helpful to find research studies where new treatments are being tested on humans
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses pull together existing original research on a particular research question, critically evaluate the evidence, and provide an answer based on the evidence we have available to us at the moment. They can be very helpful when looking at evidence for particular treatments or prevention strategies.
AND and OR still work in PubMed. Avoid using quotation marks, as they deactivate a useful behind the scenes feature that helps turn up more results

Finding Copyright Friendly Images for your Assignment

When creating your poster, it is important to consider whether you have the right to reuse an image found on the web in your project. Look for images that are marked as being in the public domain or where the image creators have explicitly states that reuse is allowed.

More information on finding copyright friendly images can be found on our Copyright guide.