Find out what characterizes a scientific/peer-reviewed article, and read about how you can search for scientific articles on a certain subject.
Scientific journals
When a journal article is peer-reviewed this means that the scientific quality of the article has been checked by other scientists before it was published. This system is most common in technology, medicine and science, but it is also used in other disciplines. Scientific journals can also, apart from the peer-reviewed articles, contain other types of articles, e.g. book reviews, debate articles and commentaries. In the section Research you can read more about scientific publishing.
There are three types of scientific articles:
- Original articles where the author accounts for empirical studies, and describes the results of her research study for the first time.
- Overview articles which are critical evaluations where the author organizes, integrates and evaluates previously published studies.
- Theoretical articles where the author based on existing research presents a new theory, analyses or criticizes existing theories.
A peer-reviewed article contains the following elements:
- Abstract – a brief summary of the article which includes purpose, method, results and conclusion.
- Introduction – where purpose and problem are described, and background information for the problem area is presented.
- Method – where the method used is described so thoroughly that it is possible for the reader to follow and repeat the research process.
- Result – where the research result is presented in text and possibly with tables, charts and figures.
- Discussion – in this part the research result is discussed as well as those principles, relations or generalisations which are supported by the result of the study. Possible weaknesses in the study are addressed here.
- Bibliography – sometimes also called list of references. All documents used by the author should be included in the bibliography.
Where can I search for peer-reviewed articles?
Among the Library’s resources:
The Library subscribes to peer-reviewed journals both in print and in electronic format. Among the electronic journals the Library subscribes to there are many peer-reviewed journals. In ELIN you can search among almost all of the Library’s e-journals which span many different subject fields. A search in ELIN does not give a complete overview of what is currently published in your subject, but if you search here you will find many interesting peer-reviewed articles which you can read on screen or print directly.
If you want to get an overview of what peer-reviewed articles have been published internationally in your subject of interest it is often easiest to search the reference database which covers your subject field, e.g. Medline for peer-reviewed articles in medicine. This will give you a pretty good idea of the current state of research in your subject. In the Searchguide’s subject guide you can see which database(s) specialize in your subject.
In a reference database there are many functions which facilitate your search considerably. A reference database contains references to many different kinds of documents, not just articles, but you can often set limits for your search so that you only search among journal articles or peer-reviewed articles. If this is not possible you must check every reference in order to see what type of document you have found – is it a journal article or a dissertation? Since reference databases are international it is also important to check the language of the document. The reference is in English, but the document it refers to can be written in Japanese or Russian. In section Database guide you can read more about reference databases.
In a reference database you cannot always find the whole article, you may only be able to read an abstract, a summary of the article. Sometimes you can get the whole article via the SFX-button or other linking, but if this is not possible you can check if the Library has the journal in print or in electronic format. If the journal is not available at the Library you can order it as an interlibrary loan if you are a student or staff at BTH.
Searching free resources on the Internet:
You can search for scientific articles on ordinary Internet search engines like Google or Yahoo, but it is neither particularly easy or effective, especially when you are searching for articles on a particular subject. It is often like searching for a needle in a haystack. If on the other hand you are searching for a particular article, and you already have some information about the article, e.g. article author, article title or journal name it may be worthwhile to search for it on for example Google.
It is more relevant to use search engines which specialize in scientific information, e.g. Scirus or Google Scholar. In Scirus’ advanced search form you can for example choose only to get articles in the search result. Through search engines like Google and Yahoo you only reach a small amount of all the information on the Internet. Even if the contents of a database or web site is free to access it can, for various reasons, not always be searched from for example Google. Instead you need to search directly on the web site you are interested in. Because of this it may be good to be familiar with some good search tools for free scientific resources on the Internet. In the section Internet you can read more about the Invisible web.
Free scientific journals – as a reaction against publishers’ extreme price increases for scientific journal subscriptions there is a movement which promotes free access to scientific information on the web. BioMedCentral is one example which contains free resources in biomedicine. DOAJ, Directory of Open Access Journals, is another example. Read more about Open Archives Initiative and Free scientific resources in the section Research.
Finally, as always when you are searching for information on the Internet you need to pay extra attention to criticism of the sources! Read more about this in the section Criticism.
Jenny Löfkvist
2006-01-27
