Publishing without peer review - articles are submitted, selected and possibly modified by the editor, and published.
Publishing with peer review - submitted articles are reviewed by other experts in the field before being accepted for publication.
In some databases, the filter or limit for peer-reviewed journals refers to them as Academic or Scholarly journals. In this context, they are the same thing: credible journals in the academic field are peer-reviewed.
For a lot of assessment tasks you need to find peer-reviewed journal articles.
This is a taste of the process that leads from research > to evidence > to changes in professional practice.
You might find yourself doing something similar in later employment to justify or recommend a change in practice.
QuickSearch is one place you can find these articles with relative ease.
QuickSearch can find these articles with relative ease, but might include many articles that are not related to your topic.
Click the button below for information on finding, reading, and referencing journal articles in QuickSearch
1. Start in QuickSearch. Type in some search words for a topic and click Search (Library main page) or the magnifying glass search icon (in QuickSearch).
AND is optional, the same as in Google.
e.g. climate change health gets the same result as climate change AND health
You can use parentheses (round brackets) and OR to search for multiple alternative words or phrases, the same as in Google.
e.g. ("climate change" OR "global warming") AND health
The double quotation marks indicate phrases (a "lump" of multiple words found together, rather than searching fo reach word separately), also the same as in Google.
Because QuickSearch looks at multiple sources, you might sometimes find the same article repeated from more than one source.
2. Click on the link for Peer-reviewed Journals (this limits your results to quality journals where articles undergo a review process before being published).
3. Often you will want to limit by Creation Date (publication date) as well.
4. Depending on the number and variation of your results, you can also limit by Topic
.
5. To read any article, click on the Full text available link under each article.
6. One or more "Full text" providers will be listed. Click on the blue Go button beside any full text provider.
Different providers will vary in their presentation (in a few of them, you will have to search for the article again).
7. Most providers will have a PDF link somewhere on the page so you can view the full article (and download or print the article).
After clicking the button above and reading how to search in QuickSearch, try it yourself:
For example, try:
("climate change" OR "global warming") AND coffee
Don't forget: Restrict to Peer-reviewed Journals, about the last 5 years, and maybe restrict further by Topic.
Library QuickSearch - items on the shelves or in the Library's electronic collections and subscriptions
Click the Settings option (may be showing on its own but more likely to be under the three-line menu icon)
Click on the Library links option, and search for federation
Tick the checkbox for Federation University Australia, and (important!) click the Save button.
If you are logged into a Google account (GMail, etc), this setting will be saved permanently.
Otherwise, you might have to redo this setup every time you restart your web browser to use Google Scholar.
Depending on your topic, this might make many more full-text resources available in your Google Scholar results, resources that the Library has paid for.
Start in Google Scholar. Search for a topic. Here we have searched for:
("climate change" OR "global warming") AND coffee AND agricultural
Use the links on the left to limit results to the last 5 years.
When using Google Scholar, see the CRAAP test (below) to evaluate each article before relying it as a reference.
To read results from Google Scholar, look for either an open access link on the right-hand side, or (if you have added Federation University as instructed above) use the Find it @Federationlink to connect to material provided via the Library.
After clicking the buttons and reading the sections above, try searching Google Scholar yourself:
Google Scholar - journal articles and other material (as detailed above, you can link Google Scholar to the Library's paid full-text subscriptions)
Google Scholar has a citation feature, but always check the citation it supplies. It may be incorrect (no upper case letter to start a subtitle, for example) or incomplete (missing the DOI, for example).
Click the quotation mark icon to pop up a window (unless blocked by pop-up settings in your web browser) containing a reference list entry several referencing styles and links to export formats for bibliographic management software (e.g. EndNote).
Underneath many articles in your Google Scholar results will be a Cited by link - this points to newer articles that have used the article in their reference list. Some of these (but not all) may be on the same topic, so it can be another way of finding newer relevant articles.
This can also be a rough guide to how much impact an article has had - articles with more impact tend to be cited more.
Databases mainly search in journal articles, often in a specific topic area, so you get fewer irrelevant results.
NAME is DESCRIPTION.
Connect to NAME
Example search:
"climate change" OR "global warming"
AND
chocolate OR cocoa OR cacao
AND
grow* OR agricultur*
Look for alternative terms for the same concept using OR.
Combine different concepts using AND.
The quotation marks (use double, not single) specify that you are searching for a phrase (a "lump of words always found together") rather than searching for the words climate and change separately.
The asterisk [*] finds all word endings, including no alternative ending.
Using grow* will find grow, growing, growth
Using agriculltur* will find agriculture as well as agricultural
Most databases allow you to restrict your results by year. You may have to type in a year or use a slider.
For many courses limiting to the last 10 years is a good "rule of thumb".
For health issues where newer treatments might be developed, try the last 5 years instead.
Many databases will also have a limit to peer reviewed or academic or scholarly articles (this generally means the same thing). Some EBSCO databases show both (either one works).
Do not limit to Full Text. That limits ot only the full text in the database, and hides all the other full text that you might have through other databases, subscriptions, or open access.
You might also be able to limit by subject headings, similar to the Topic limits in QuickSearch.
There are several ways to see full-text in NAME.
Links to full text in the same database, links to full text in another database by the same company, and links to SFX, a search service that checks for the article in all Federations University Library's databases and online subscriptions.
(The Library strongly recommends NOT using Internet Explorer as your web browser when looking for full text)
After clicking the button above and reading how to search in NAME, try it yourself:
Connect to NAMEWhat is your research question?
Type your research question into the box above, then click the Next button (below).
Copy and paste the search strategy into Scopus or your preferred database
The typical peer-reviewed primary research article contains some or all of the following sections (and possibly other sections not mentioned here). Click each one to learn more:
The abstract provides a brief summary of the journal article contents.
Look at the abstract when deciding whether to select and use an article in your search results.
The introduction sets the background and context of the article, and may include the reason the research was undertaken.
Pay attention to this section on your first reading.
The methodology might not be included in some "discussion articles", but will be included in many research articles.
It gives explicit details of how the research was conducted, and should be sufficient to reproduce the research.
On your first reading you might skip over this section.
It's the research equivalent of a cooking recipe.
Results and analysis (sometimes merged, sometimes separate sections) give a detailed listing of the research results, and details on how the results were summarised and interpreted, and may include statistical details.
On a first reading you might skip over this section.
This section might not be present in some "discussion articles".
This is usually a discussion of the results or other sections of the paper, including potential flaws in the research and implications of the results.
Pay attention to this section on your first reading.
This usually sums up the outcome or recommendations from the research or discussion. It is the "bottom line" of the article.
Pay attention to this section on your first reading.
At this point, you might want to consider whether the results and the analysis justifies the conclusion, or whether a strong conclusion is being made from insufficient or uncertain results.
Good-quality journal articles will provide references to either support the ideas and arguments in the article, or to provide a source for the ideas and information used. In-text citations in the other sections will show where each reference has been used. On a first reading you might skip over this section.
If you are using a recent article, the references can be a good source for finding more articles on the same topic.
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