PSYC 111: General Psychology: Finding Scholarly Articles

The best place to begin your search for credible information sources is the search box on the library's home page. This simple, powerful discovery tool will help you find valuable content from scholarly journals, trade publications, popular magazines, and newspapers, as well as physical items in our library (e.g. books, DVDs, reference materials).

Using the library's search box allows you to search multiple databases and thousands of journals all at once. But if, for some reason, you need to search just one database or one journal at a time, the links on this page can help you do that.

If you're looking only for articles--including scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles--use the dropdown menu beside the main search box to select "Articles."

Enter a few important subject-related keywords in the search box and hit the "Search" button.

You can narrow your results even further on your search results screen. If you're only interested in articles from Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed journals, look for the "Limit To" panel and click the box that says "Scholarly Sources." Your results list will be updated to weed out non-scholarly sources.

Instructors often ask students to find “scholarly”, “academic”, or “peer reviewed” sources of information for their research.  These terms all refer to the same type of information – sources based on in-depth research, and are considered higher in quality and more reliable for your research. 

These sources can range from chapters within books or entire books, or journal articles, but all have common characteristics that can help you recognize that type of information.

• Produced by experts or researchers in a specialized field or discipline. The authors typically have advanced degrees and are usually affiliated with universities or research institutes. The authors' credentials, academic affiliation, and contact information will usually be listed in the source.
• Purpose is to present new or unpublished research.
• Articles reviewed by experts for scholarly content or quality, or peer reviewed.
• Written using formal language and structure. Most research articles in the natural and social sciences will include a set of standard sections with sub-headings including abstract, literature review, methods, results/discussion, and conclusion. Scholarly sources are usually accompanied by a lengthy list of references/works cited or a bibliography.
• May include tables, graphs, or illustrations to communicate data, but rarely feature photos, ads, or decorative fonts.