Literature Review & Peer-Reviewed, Scholarly Sources  

Some criteria for evaluating the scholarly nature of research articles are listed below. Although the criteria are geared toward experiemental sciences, the same general qualities can be found in Arts and Humanities research resources as well:

• Theory/Hypothesis -- A question or problem
• Literature review -- A thorough search of previous research that addresses the problem (or ones like them)
• Methodology -- A guideline explaining of method used to gather data (details about example questions, experiment, analysis of letters)
• Data -- Raw data and organized data -- the information that was gathered and organized and/or "coded"
• Interpretation of Data -- Analysis of gathered data in relation to hypothesis and in relation to previous research
• Conclusion/Findings -- summary of research conducted, and significance in relation to the field. Some proposal for further research.
• Bibliography/References -- from both literature and analysis portions

Scholarly, peer-reviewed resources are written by experts, for experts; the source is generally subject to review by experts prior to publication to make sure the methodology is sound, the sources   To offer a little more information on how to tell whether a source is scholarly enough to include in a literature review.

DATABASES:  When you narrow down a database search in a St. John’s Library database, try narrowing your search to Scholarly resources, or look for the Graduation cap icon to indicate scholarly.  Of the scholarly resources within a database, you might find the following:

Journals: Scholarly, peer-reviewed articles are written by experts, for experts.  An original research  article is submitted to an editorial board, who in turn send the article to other experts in the field (their peers) to decide whether the article offers new/important information in the field.  These articles may analyze primary sources (data, interviews, surveys, experiments) or may clarify an issue raised by other articles or secondary sources within a discipline.  Depending on your subject discipline, you may want to double-check the subsections of an article for "methodology," "results," etc.

Dissertations/Theses: These works are peer-reviewed in the sense that the author's mentor and committee are experts who have accepted this work as a scholarly contribution to the field.

Conference Proceedings: Most conferences have a review committee that accepts the highest-quality presentations, and subsequently chooses papers to publish from the accepted presentations/papers.  One should check whether a conference has been peer-reviewed.

A note on Newspapers and Popular Magazines: While a newspaper or Magazine article are generally NOT considered to be scholarly sources there are a few exceptions: When conducting scholarly research in History, or examining the historical aspect of a field, newspapers may be considered a primary source for scholarly research.  Keep in mind, however, that a newspaper or popular magazine may cover the results of a "recent study" which was newsworthy -- use that article to find the original study.

CATALOG:  Use the catalog to find print or e-books.  Note that in addition to using our catalog, using WorldCat may be of help to find print books in your area if you are away from the physical campus.  Also check for academic press titles at sponsoring Universities, some universities provide access to full-text PDFs for free.  WorldCat is also helpful for conducting a more through literature review, and for adding books to your refworks account (through the export feature).

Books: Not all published books are peer-reviewed or written by experts, however, books within an academic library collection have been reviewed by subject librarians, who have evaluated them as authoritative sources -- because the author is an expert, or because the publisher or sponsoring organization is reputable.  Occasionally, an academic library may collect a book that serves a "controversial" resource, in order to offer a balance point of view, but this re-affirms the need to verify sources and synthesize a number of resources when tackling a topic.

Google Books is also an option for finding older books that are in the public domain or have been published by the Author to allow for Open Access, but the results will not be strictly "Academic" and may have questionable results (see INTERNET below)

INTERNET: Because web-content is so easy to generate, by experts and non-experts alike, one should assume that a web resource is not-peer-reviewed or scholarly unless you can find author (with credentials), date of publication, and publisher.  You should additionally be able to positively evaluate the information as being unbiased, or find another site to balance bias.

Open Access Journals: Note that an increasing number of Journals are being published on the web so that scholars can have free access rather than going through a database -- these types of Journals will have all the verifying information and should indicate in an "about" section whether he Journal is peer-reviewed or not.  

Google & GoogleScholar: To narrow your search for more reliable results in Google, narrow your search to ".edu" or ".gov" domains.  For more scholarly results, you might try Google Scholar, which is populated by papers which have.  Be sure to set your GoogleScholar preferences to add the "library links"   

Adding these will allow the  "check for Full text" feature (which helps find the article in our Databases) to appear as part of GS results. 

While you are there, you might also add your bibliographic manager   to Show links to import citations into .  RefWorks

Government Publications: While not necessarily reviewed by scholars, a government publication has generally been subject to internal review.  Government sources can be excellent sources of primary data and preliminary results.  Government-funded research is also made freely available through Government websites.  Given the "western bent" of many of our databases and journals, government publications may be the only sources of information available for your topic.

NGO/IGO sites:  Evaluate NGO and IGO sites the same way you would any internet site.  Keep in mind that NGOs may act as "watchdogs" for official Government information