I need to find peer-reviewed articlesI don't know if this article is peer-reviewed I need to find newspaper articles I need to find a specific articleA website wants me to pay for this articleI found too many or too few articles on my topicI found one perfect article for my topic and need more like itI can't find the full-text of this article
In order to find peer-reviewed articles, first make sure you're familiar with what peer-reviewed articles are.
The most common place to find peer-reviewed articles is in library databases. Library databases have advanced search features that make finding appropriate articles easier, and provide the most options for obtaining the full text of articles. The quickest way to find the article databases is the Article Databases link under Find, Borrow, Request on the library homepage. Tutorials are available for learning how to use specific databases.
If you're not sure which database you need to be searching in, or just want to start with a very broad search, you can use the Articles Search, which is the second tab on the library's main search box. It searches several different databases at once.
You can also find scholarly articles - though not always the full-text of them - in Google Scholar. This works best if you follow the logging in instructions to set up Google Scholar to work with Bradley's library.
Many databases contain a mixture of both peer-reviewed articles and non-scholarly, non-peer-reviewed articles. Most databases also provide a filter to let you limit your results to only articles from peer-reviewed journals. Look for a checkbox or a filter option labelled "Peer-Reviewed Journals" and make sure it is checked. Sometimes it will be on the advanced search screen.
Sometimes you can apply the peer-reviewed filter after you have gotten your initial search results.
These filters apply only to peer-reviewed journals. This means that the journal has a peer-review process in place for its research articles. However, these journals may still contain other kinds of articles, such as book reviews or essays. Therefore, when you find an article that looks relevant to your topic, you still need to evaluate whether an individual article has been peer-reviewed.
Peer-reviewed articles play an important role in the spreading of new research in a given field. These articles have the following characteristics:
Peer-reviewed articles may also be referred to as research articles, scholarly articles, or academic articles. All these terms describe the same type of article.
Peer-reviewed articles are normally to be found in scholarly journals. Scholarly journals are easiest to access through library databases, which often have features that can help you recognize this kind of journal. A journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles may also publish content that is not peer-reviewed, such as book reviews or opinion columns, so identifying a journal as scholarly doesn't mean everything inside it is a scholarly article. You'll need to evaluate the article by itself as well. However, confirming that the journal is scholarly and has a peer-review process in place makes it more likely that an article you find inside it will be peer-reviewed.
Here are ways you can identify a scholarly journal:
When searching in a database, search results will sometimes have icons next to them that indicate what kind of publication they come from. Here is one example from a psychology database.
Here is an example from a nursing database.
In most databases, if you click on the title of the article, and then click on the title of the journal from the item page, it will give you more information about that journal, including whether or not it uses peer-review.
Peer-reviewed articles often follow very specific guidelines for how they are written and formatted. These guidelines may vary based on what discipline the author is doing research in, but generally a scholarly article will have the following attributes:
Articles that are not scholarly may sometimes include some of the same attributes as scholarly articles. To identify a scholarly article, look to see if the article has a majority of these characteristics.
If you specifically need to find newspaper articles on your topic, there are two options through the library website. Using the library website is a starting point is a good way to make sure you don't run into a paywall or have to pay unnecessarily for news articles.
If you would like to find articles from a specific newspaper, you can search for the title of the newspaper using the Journals Available search within the catalog. Even though it's called Journals Available, it includes magazines and newspapers as well.
You can find the Journals Available search within the library catalog, in the row of links at the top.
Once there, you can search for the title or ISSN of the newspaper you are interested in. After hitting search, results will be listed below the search box. Newspapers that are available online will have links labelled Available Online underneath their title. You can click on this link to be taken directly to the database that contains the newspaper, or click on the title of the newspaper to get more information about it.
There are also newspaper databases that let you search the contents of many different newspapers at once. All newspaper-focused databases can be found on the Finding Articles box on the library homepage, then Listing by Subject or Category, and then News. Newspaper Source and NexisUni are the two biggest databases that contain the broadest range of newspapers. Other listed on this page contain more focused collections or single newspapers.
Once inside a newspaper database, you can search just as you would for articles in any other article database. Because these databases are focused on news sources, those are the results that you will get.
Say you need to track down a specific article - one that you saw mentioned in another article, or that someone has recommended to you. In order to track down the full-text, first make sure you have as complete a citation for the article as possible. That will make it easier for you to track down the article using one of the following options.
The library catalog’s Article search can help you find a specific article using either the title of the article or the DOI (Digital Object Identifier). The DOI is like the ID number of the specific article. Not every article will have a DOI. Having a complete citation will let you know whether your article has a DOI or not.
You can use the Articles search either from the Articles tab on the library homepage search box:
Or, if you are already in the catalog, by choosing the "Articles" options from the dropdown menu after the catalog search box:
If the article does not show up when you search for the title or DOI in this article search, you can try the other options listed below.
To search for a specific publication, first make sure you know the name of the publication (journal, magazine, or newspaper) that the article was published in. Then click the Journals A-Z link under Find, Borrow, Request on the library homepage. Do not be discouraged by this step if your article is from a publication that isn't a journal - if the library has it, you will still be able to find it here.
Once you have clicked on the Journals A-Z link, you will see a search bar labelled Journal Search. Type in the title of your publication here - we are not searching for the actual article yet. Hit search and then look in the list of results to see if the publication you are looking for is present. If your publication is listed and there is a link underneath labelled Available Online, click on the Available Online link to see your options for accessing that publication.
If your publication does not show up, it means the library does not hold a subscription. If this happens, or if your desired publication is only available in print, you can ask a librarian for assistance in accessing it.
Once you have clicked on an access option under the View Online section, you will be taken to a menu for your publication inside the database. Depending on which database the publication is stored in, there are different ways that this menu/screen will look. However, any database should allow you to either search within a specific publication, browse the publication by year, or both.
If you prefer to search and the option is available, search for the title of your article. Make sure the search box indicates that you are searching within the publication and not the database as a whole - there may be multiple search boxes in different places on the page. If you don't spot it in the results, try including the author's name in your search as well.
If there is not an option to search inside the specific publication, or if searching doesn't bring you what you want, you may be able to browse to the article. For this method, it's most helpful if you know the year that the article was published, as well as the date or the volume and issue number. Use this information to move through the browsing menu until you find your specific article.
If the library does not have access to a copy of your article, and it is from a scholarly journal, you can try to find a free version using Google Scholar. From within Google Scholar, search for as exact a version of the title as you can. Once you hit search and have results, make sure the article you are looking for has appeared. If it has, look to the right to see if there is PDF or HTML link located there. If so, that means there is a copy freely available online. Click on the link to access it.
If there is no full-text link to the right, that means there is no free access to that article. If it's not in the library databases either (you can configure Google Scholar to find database articles as well), you may need to request it.
If you configure Google Scholar to find database articles, you may see Get It @ Bradley links to the right of Google Scholar results, or Get Help @ Bradley links below results, hidden beneath an arrow. In library databases, when the full-text of an article is not available within the database, you may also see a Get It @ Bradley button. Any of these links or buttons will take you to the full-text or to a page where you can request an article to be sent to you.
Once you have clicked on a Get It or Get Help link, you will see a screen with more options for accessing the article. Not every option will appear for every article. The possible options are:
Many of the library databases provide the full-text of the article directly from the article page.
Sometimes, as in JSTOR, you will be shown the full text immediately after you click on the title in the results list.
In others, look for a link or icon labelled "PDF Full Text," "HTML Full Text," or "Linked Full Text." These links may be in slightly different places in different databases, but they will all take you to the full-text. Here are some examples.
If the full-text is not held within the database, you may see instead a button labelled as "Get It @ BU - Check full text availability."
Clicking on this link will take you to a page where you can find other options for accessing full-text. Not every option will be listed for every article. Whichever options appear, look for them in this order, which is listed as easiest to hardest in terms of how many steps you have to take and how long it will take to get it.
Occasionally on your quest for articles, you may end up on page where you are told that you must pay real money in order to access an article. You shouldn't have to pay for any articles during your time as a student at Bradley. When you see a prompt telling you to pay, there are two likely scenarios.
For help with either of these circumstances, you can always contact a librarian.
If you're not getting the results you expect to get, you might be using the wrong search tool. The best place to conduct your search depends on what kind of information you need.
There are several different strategies you can apply if you find yourself with too many, or too few, results for your searches.
Say you have found one really great article for your project but you need more than that. These are techniques you can use to start with one article and find similar, related articles. You can repeat these steps with each new article you find to trace your topic through the published literature about it.
If you found your article inside a library database, it most likely has subject headings assigned to it. Subject headings are like tags that have been applied to an article by the people who organize the contents of the database. The subject headings give you a good idea of what the main topics of the article are. By clicking on or searching for the subject headings instead of plain keywords, you can find more articles with the same core ideas.
Subject headings are most often listed on the page of information about the article, where you would find the abstract and link to the full text. Some databases refer to their subject headings using specialized terms, such as "MeSH Terms" for health and nursing databases. If you don't see subject headings listed, see if there are any other tags or categories being used to organize articles in that database.
Most scholarly articles will have a list of works cited or references at the end. These represent the articles the authors read or drew on in order to create their own work. Scan through this list to see if any of the articles mentioned look like they might also support your topic. If a useful section from your original article contains a quote or reference from a different source, definitely look for that source in the reference list and track it down.
In addition to looking at what works your article has cited or quoted, you can look to see what other sources your original article has been cited in, if any. These will likely be sources that build or expand on the ideas from your original article. In order to find out where an article has been cited, search for it in Google Scholar. When your article appears in the search results, look for the Cited By link underneath the result. It does not matter if the full-text of your original article is available in Google Scholar or not. Click on the Cited By link to see a list of articles that cite your original article.
The articles that cite your original article may or may not be available in full-text through Google Scholar, but you can also search for them in library databases or order them through Interlibrary Loan/ILLiad. The Cited By list just gives you articles to look for. If your original article is very new, you may not find anything this way, because researchers will not have had enough time yet to finish work that references the article.