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ENGL 1020: English Composition 1020

This guide will help you devise a search strategy from a research question, find resources, and get through that big paper.

Scholarly Evidence in a Database

Is it Scholarly?

When you do a search in an academic database, your results will look something like this. This is called the item record. There are a lot of things to notice here, but the real question is -- is the article you've found scholarly? There are a couple of clues to help you find out.

database record for journal article


The presence of charts and tables in the item record is a good indicator of a primary, peer-reviewed research article.

article record showing presence of charts


Using the source types refiner bar helps you identify different kinds of sources more easily. You can refine by academic journals here, which should narrow down by scholarly, or peer-reviewed articles available in this database. 

Finally, when you open an article and begin looking at the contents, consider all of the criteria discussed in Is It Scholarly? You should see plenty of overlap!

search bar resuts