LCIS 201: Surveillance in Modern America: Scholarly Sources

Keywords are...

• A good way to start a search.
• The important concepts in your own words.
• Found anywhere in the article (title, author, subject terms, etc.).
• Very flexible.

Connecting concepts...

• Join similar ideas or alternate terms with "OR."
• Link different parts of your topic with "AND."
• Exclude concepts with "NOT."

Limit to Peer-Reviewed, Referred or Scholarly articles...

• This is part of the publication & editorial process for academic and research journals.  Being peer-reviewed is a sign that a paper's author(s) have done a certain level of due diligence in their work and their research is complete, manages conflicts-of-interest, and is fair and objective.

Narrow the Date Range...

• When looking for Current Research or Evidence-Based Practices limit your date range to the last 3-5 years.

Still not finding anything?  Ask a Librarian!

A peer-reviewed or peer-refereed journal or article is one in which a group of widely acknowledged experts in a field reviews the content for scholarly soundness and academic value.

You can limit your search results to peer reviewed materials in many library databases:

Below is an example to demonstrate how the main concepts from a research topic or question become keywords and how synonyms or related terms can broaden your search:

Now that you've created your list of keywords, you will need to combine them using BOOLEAN operators (AND and OR):

What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar searches for scholarly literature in a simple, familiar way. You can search across many disciplines and sources at once to find articles, books, theses, court opinions, and content from academic publishers, professional societies, some academic web sites, and more.

Stuff you can do:

• Getting the "big picture" of the scholarly discourse around a topic.
• Viewing books, articles, conference proceedings, and more in one list.
• Using the "Cited by" tool to look forward in a citation chain
• Determining authors and publications in an area of interest.
• Tracking down incomplete citations.

Stuff you can't do:

• Limiting and sorting results by type (eg. peer reviewed articles, full-text, reviews).
• Searching within a specific discipline
• Browsing by journal title.
• Doing a comprehensive search for a literature review.
• Using controlled vocabulary to search by subject.
• Emailing lists of search results.