Finding peer-reviewed articles
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Finding peer-reviewed articles
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In this tutorial, you will learn how to find peer-reviewed journal articles.
Let's say that you are interested in the potential impacts of global warming on sea levels.
You'd like to find peer-reviewed articles on this topic because you know that's where experts publish their research, but you’re not sure which journal to search in.
If that’s the case, start with a broad database search.
Finding peer-reviewed articles
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Start at our library home page, library.wlu.ca.
At the left side of the page, click the Databases link, and then click on Browse databases by subject.
Finding peer-reviewed articles
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At the left side of the page, click the Databases link, and then click on Browse databases by subject.
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You're now on Databases page. This page lists databases organized by our areas of teaching and research.
Select a link that you think best matches the area you’re interested in.
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In this case, we'll scroll down and select Geography and Environmental Studies.
Finding peer-reviewed articles
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In this case, we'll scroll down and select Geography and Environmental Studies.
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On the subject page, you see a list of databases that you can search through to find full-text articles.
Note that there are many different databases to choose from, so if you don't find relevant results in one, try another.
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Let's select Geography and Environmental Sciences @ ProQuest.
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This is the search screen for ProQuest.
You can use the search boxes to link related concepts together.
For our example, we'll start by entering the concept "global warming"
Beside it, we'll type in the related concept "climate change"
The “OR” links the two related concepts together
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In the boxes below, you can enter another concept you want to search for; in this case, sea level.
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In the boxes below, you can enter another concept you want to search for; in this case, sea level.
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On the bottom row, we’ll enter the terms "impact" …or… the related term ”effect.”
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On the bottom row, we’ll enter the terms "impact" …or… the related term” effect.”
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A star at the end of the word searches for variant spellings.
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A star at the end of the word searches for variant spellings.
You can also add more rows if needed.
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In ProQuest , the way to limit your results to peer-reviewed materials is to check the peer-reviewed box in the Search options section.
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Other databases, such as EBSCO databases, have similar features.
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If you don’t see an option like this to limit to only peer-reviewed articles, it’s most likely the database contains only peer-reviewed material.
The JSTOR database is an example.
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And Web of Science is also another example.
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Back to our ProQuest search - When you’re ready, click the search button.
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We've already limited our list to peer-reviewed materials, but we get results from multiple publication types such as books and conference papers.
We can narrow our results further to only scholarly journals.
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Then, we’ll re-sort the list of results from date to relevance.
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Then, we’ll re-sort the list of results from date to relevance.
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Then, we’ll re-sort the list of results from date to relevance.
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To see if the full-text is available for an article, click the Get It button.
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To see if the full-text is available for an article, click the Get It button.
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To see if the full-text is available for an article, click the Get It button.
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You’ll then see a page with options to access the full-text version of the article, if it is available, and what databases it may be accessed through.
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Another window opens.
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We can now access a full-text version of the article as a pdf document.
Click the pdf link, and a new window will open with your article.
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Finding peer-reviewed articles
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If you have any questions, ask us at library.wlu.ca/help/askus.
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