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Tips for Finding Academic & Scholarly Articles

Your best bets for finding academic & scholarly articles, plus step by step tips to save you time and get the sources you need.

What is an Academic or Scholarly Article?

""Academic or scholarly articles are written by scholars and experts who have have studied the field about which they are writing for years.

The articles are then published in a journal that specializes in scholarship in that field. If an article has been published in a scholarly journal, the publishers of the journal are essentially vouching for the quality of the article and you can have confidence that it is credible information. Here are some characteristics of scholarly articles:

  • Articles written by an expert, always signed (author's name listed)
  • Credentials of author listed, such as education and position
  • References and sources consulted are listed
  • Frequently includes graphs, charts
  • Frequently have abstracts
  • Aimed at people in the field or studying the field
  • Few or no ads

Example

Extracted from The Family Management Style Framework for Families of Children with Obesity.
(Must be on campus or have a COM account to view the entire article).

Use the Right Databases

We have many databases with academic and scholarly articles, but also many that don't. On the A-Z Databases page under the Content Type menu, you can select Academic & Scholarly to make sure you're using the right databases or use the direct link below. 

Gale Academic OneFile

The result list defaults to Academic Journal articles in Academic OneFile

  1. Perform a search on your topic. 
  2. All your results will on the default result list will be from academic (scholarly) journals. 

JSTOR

All the content in JSTOR is considered scholarly so you can search as you normally would. JSTOR does include content other than articles, such as primary sources, images reports and open content in the results, however. To take these out your results: 

  1. Under Refine Results, find Academic Content
  2. Select Journals 
  3. You should be left with scholarly articles. 

ProQuest

Get scholarly articles in ProQuest. Here's how:

  1. Above the search box, select Scholarly Journals.
  2. Enter your search terms in the search box and hit enter..
  3. All your results will now be from scholarly journals.