Information Ecosystem
Scholarly Research Articles
Learning Objectives
- Define scholarly research articles and describe their key characteristics, including purpose, structure, authorship, and use of discipline-specific language and citations.
- Explain the peer-review process and distinguish peer-reviewed articles from other scholarly and non-scholarly sources.
- Identify strategies and tools for determining whether a scholarly article is peer-reviewed and evaluate the suitability of different scholarly source types for specific research needs.
Overview
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to recognize a scholarly research article, understand how it differs from other sources, and determine whether it has been peer-reviewed.
Scholarly research articles are written by experts and reviewed by other experts before being published. This process helps make sure the information is accurate and trustworthy.
If you’ve done peer review in a writing class, you already know the basic idea—someone reads your work and gives feedback before you turn it in. Scholarly peer review works the same way, but the reviewers are experts in the same field. Instead of checking grammar, they review the research, evidence, and conclusions to make sure everything meets high standards. If it doesn’t, the article can be sent back for major changes or even rejected.
Peer-reviewed scholarly research articles might be useful to you if…
- You need reliable information about a topic that has been reviewed by experts in a field
- You are looking for facts and figures that can be cited related to a topic
Peer-reviewed scholarly research articles might be less useful if…
- You need foundational information about a topic
- Your need extremely recent information about a topic
Identifying Scholarly Research Articles
There are five main points to consider when trying to determine if an article is a scholarly research article.
- Purpose: The purpose of a scholarly research article is to advance knowledge in a field of study, often in the form of original research or analysis.
- Format: Scholarly research articles are usually five pages or longer.
- Authors: The authors of scholarly research articles are experts in the field, such as professors, scientists, etc.
- Language: Scholarly research articles are text-heavy, with advanced language and terminology from the discipline.
- Sources: Scholarly research articles Include citations and a bibliography, works cited, or references list.
The Peer-Review Process
A journal is a scholarly publication containing articles, letters to the editors, and book reviews written by researchers, professors, and other experts. Journals focus on a specific discipline or field of study and are published on a regular basis (monthly, quarterly, etc.). The intended reading audience is other experts and not the general public. The authors are considered experts because they have PhDs and have specialized in-depth knowledge of current and past theories and years of training in research and analysis.
When a professor writes a research article, they will submit it to a peer-reviewed journal to be published. However, before the journal will accept the article, it will be reviewed by experts in the same area of study, hence, their peers. If their peers deem their research lacking validity, they will be asked to make changes, or their article might be outright rejected. This is why assignments ask you to use articles published in peer-reviewed journals as they contain rigorous research and use a critical lens when picking what gets published.
It is also important to keep in mind that there are many theories or schools of thought within a discipline, and professors chose to conduct their research through one particular theory. An economics professor, for example, could write their article through a Marxist or a Neoliberal lens. You need to develop an awareness of the different theories in your subject area as this will help you identify what lens the author is using to conduct their research. This is also important if an assignment requires sources from different theories or if you must support your thesis with sources from one particular theory.
Experts like professors often publish their evidence-based research in non-peer-reviewed sources like books and newspapers. These sources are still considered authoritative and contain expert research and are often reviewed by editors for accuracy, but they do not count as peer-reviewed sources. It is important to know the difference if your professor specifically requests that you use articles from peer-reviewed journals. Not to worry, library databases are designed to help you locate peer-reviewed scholarly research articles.
It is also important to understand that even if a journal is peer-reviewed, not everything in the journal will have been peer-reviewed. For example, the scholarly research articles that appear in a peer-reviewed journal will be peer-reviewed, but things such as book reviews and letters to the editor will likely not have been peer-reviewed.
The above section is adopted from the “Scholarly Peer-Reviewed Sources” section of the Toronto Metropolitan University’s Write Here, Right Now: An Interactive Introduction to Academic Writing and Research.
Figuring Out if a Scholarly Research Article was Peer-Reviewed
As mentioned at the beginning of this section, it can sometimes be tricky to determine if a scholarly research article was a peer-reviewed. When you search in the library’s Search@UW and databases, scholarly research articles will often be labeled as being peer-reviewed (See image 1 below for an example of the peer-review label). Additionally, when searching in Search@UW, you can limit your search results so that you will only see scholarly research articles that are marked as being peer-reviewed. Most databases will also let you limit your search results to only scholarly research articles that have been marked as being peer-reviewed. To learn how to do this, see the “Search@UW as a Tool” chapter that goes over conducting searches in Search@UW and databases.
However, even when a scholarly research article is labeled as being peer-reviewed in Search@UW or a database, you should still do a little digging to confirm that the article has actually been peer-reviewed. You can use the clues in the tip box below to help you determine if a scholarly research article has been peer-reviewed.
Tip: If You Already Have Determined That an Article Is Scholarly, You Can Check if It’s Peer-Reviewed
| Research the journal/publisher | Is the journal published by a scholarly society? A university press? Sometimes Googling the name of the source can help you determine if it is peer-reviewed. |
| Submission history | Look for dates when article was submitted, reviewed, revised, published, etc., on the first page of the article. |
The above tip box is adopted from Indiana University’s Navigating Information Literacy.
Types of Scholarly Sources
The table below lists some of the most common types of scholarly sources and offers brief descriptions of each type. Having a basic understanding of the different types of scholarly sources can help you identify what source type you might want to look at when completing your specific research project.
| Source Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Empirical studies | Empirical studies describe original research completed by the author(s). This could be a new study or a new analysis of existing data. Look for sections of the article that describe methods, results, and an analysis or discussion of the results. |
| Case studies | Case studies report on information gathered while working with a specific individual or group. Case studies may describe a little-known or common condition or problem or reveal the need for more research in that area. |
| Meta-analyses | Meta-analyses are quantitative, statistical analyses of the results of two or more studies on the same topic or hypothesis. By combining the results of multiple studies, the author(s) of the meta-analysis hope to provide greater understanding of the topic. |
| Theoretical articles | Theoretical articles may present a new theory for understanding a field or area of knowledge, or they may refine or critique an existing theory. These articles may refer to empirical research but only in order to advance or show application of the theory. |
| Literature reviews | Literature reviews summarize and analyze previously published research on a given topic but do not contain original research themselves. They are useful in helping to understand a topic and the research that has already been done in that area. References included in the literature review can help you to find empirical research articles on your topic. |
| Caution! Other scholarly communication | Scholarly journals often publish other types of writing relating to communication between members of the field. These articles are usually short in length and are considered not scholarly, meaning that they are not peer-reviewed. Examples of this type of writing include book reviews, letters to the editor, comments on previously published articles, and obituaries. |
Reflection
- Why do you think using peer-reviewed scholarly research articles will be useful when you are completing a research project?
- Is there a specific scholarly source type that you believe will be especially useful for your research project? Which type and why?
Attributions
This chapter contains material adapted from:
- Write Here, Right Now: An Interactive Introduction to Academic Writing and Research Copyright © 2018 by Ryerson University, used under a CC BY 4.0 license.
- Navigating Information Literacy Copyright © by Julie Feighery, used under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
