Need Better(More Authoritative) Sources?
Key Takeaways:
Need more authoritative results? Try:
- Find out if your professor wants credible sources like well respected newspapers, magazines, websites, or if he wants scholarly articles written by people with PhD's.
- Find scholarly articles by filtering for academic/scholarly/peer reviewed journals and look for a lot of references at the end.
- Use Ulrich's, a library database, to check if a journal is peer-reviewed or not.
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An empirical article means there is original research. One study with methods, results and a discussion. A literature review summarized multiple studies on a topic.
Did your instructor tell you that you need better sources? What they are most likely saying is you need more authoritative sources. There are a couple of search tips you can try to make sure that all the results that come back in a search are from reputable sources. As with all sources, you will still have to evaluate if the source you use is acceptable for your information need.
First understand what types of sources your instructor wants.
Some instructors are okay with magazines, newspaper articles, websites... written for the general public as long as they are considered credible (e.g. New York Times, National Geographic). Find out how to evaluate these popular sources.
Academic/Scholarly/Peer reviewed Articles
Others want you to use scholarly articles. They might use the term academic journal, peer review or scholarly to express the same concept. While the terms mean slightly different things, your instructor is most likely referring to articles that have been peer reviewed, a lengthy and arduous process that means not only were they written by subject matter experts(people with PhDs teaching in universities), but several other subject matter experts verified that the material is original, useful, and accurate. Learn more about the peer review process.
Find academic/scholarly/peer reviewed articles
Academic articles can be found most quickly through the library databases.
Search for library databases by subject.
Most databases enable you to filter content for academic/scholarly/or peer reviewed journals.
Identify academic/scholarly/peer reviewed articles
Sometimes other content will appear in these journals like book reviews or opinion articles.
You have to take a further step and make sure you are accessing a peer reviewed article.
The easiest way to do this while you are searching is look for the page count. 1-4 pages it is not a peer reviewed article(some peer reviewed articles from different countries might be this short, but make sure they are the best material for your information need before using them).If the article is over 10 pages, it is probably a peer-reviewed article.
This is not a peer reviewed article!
The image below shows a book review in a peer reviewed journal. Although it is marked as peer-reviewed, it is not a peer-reviewed article. It is easy to identify (for you or the person grading your paper) because it is 2 pages long.
Once you have identified a possible article based on page count, access the article and look for the following characteristics:
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- Author's institutional information
- Abstract (some fields might not have this. Mainly from the humanities.)
- Methods, Results, Discussion (some fields might not have this. Mainly from the humanities)
- A lot of references
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Note: Some articles in certain fields don’t have abstracts or methods because they do not apply to the type of research they do. In these cases look for articles over 10 pages that include author institutional affiliation and a long list of references.
Peer reviewed articles look like this image from Kansas State University
They have a lot of references at the end.
Use Ulrichsweb to verify if a journal is peer reviewed or not
You can also use the library database Ulrich's to verify if a journal is peer reviewed or not. Connect to Ulrich's and search for a journal title. You can only perform journal title searches in Ulrich's.
The search below for The Journal of Fandom Studies show that it is a peer reviewed journal by portraying an icon that looks like a referee shirt. Peer reviewed journal are also know as refereed journals. If this is unclear you can click on the title and it will clearly tell you if the journal is peer reviewed or not.
Check your comprehension
My instructor asked for Empirical/Original Research or a Review?
Sometimes an instructor will specify that they want original research or empirical research or that they want you to find a literature review of the research that has been conducted on a certain topic.
The image below summarizes the differences between empirical or original research and reviews. Empirical research is an original study. There will be a methods section and results because something was tested. A literature review summarizes research that has been conducted on a certain topic. There is no research done for a literature review. Instead it summarizes the results of a lot of different articles.
Depending on the database you are searching in you might be able to filter for empirical research or reviews from the advanced search menu. Regardless, you will need to view the article to see if they conducted original research to distinguish between the two.
Why peer review?
The graphic below from The American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) illustrates a typical peer review process. Link out to the ASHA peer review process Links to an external site., or just think about the amount of steps a well researched article written by an expert in the field goes through before being published in a peer reviewed journal.
This video from North Carolina State University explains more about the peer review process.
Click here for transcript.