A student comes up to the desk and says that he needs two scholarly articles to write a paper for school. How do I help him?

You can see whether or not an article is scholarly by checking for footnotes or looking at the end of the article to see if there’s a list of references.  Another clue is to see if the author is affiliated with an institution such as a university.  Many scholarly journals have as part of their title the words journal, review, or research.  Check to see if the publication comes from a professional organization.  And if the article has either technical terms or vocabulary, that could mean it’s a scholarly article.

Many databases will make the task of searching for scholarly articles easier – they do the work for you.  When you enter your search terms, look at the display to see if there’s a place to check off for scholarly journals.  Sometimes this is called peer-reviewed or maybe refereed.  When you get your hits, the articles will be selected for scholarly articles only and you are on your way.

For more information and tips for finding scholarly articles, check out the Finding Scholarly Articles How-to Guide by the Periodicals Department.