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Literature Review: Select Resources

Scholarly vs. Poular Sources

Scholarly Sources
Scholarly sources are materials written by scholars in a particular academic field. These scholarly materials appear in scholarly journals (ex. Victorian Studies), journals by an academic organization, or published in scholarly books.
 
Other indicators of scholarly materials:
  • Journal focuses on one discipline (ex. Journal of Immunology);
  • Author's credentials are included;
  • Bibliographic information (Works Cited or References)
  • Present original research or experimentation
  • More emphasis is placed on content than on appearance.
  • Specialized language, charts, and/or graphs
Non-Scholarly or Popular Materials
Non-scholarly or popular materials are generally written for public interest.  Editors normally seek articles that deal with current issues and popular topics in culture and society. Depending on the topic of study (ex. Journalism), popular materials may need to be used in research in an academic paper. For example, the BlackLivesMatter movement will mostly be written by popular sources but that does not mean scholars have not researched about it. It is up to the writing scholar to balance both types of sources.
 
Examples of non-scholarly materials:
  • Wikipedia(s)
  • Random or general public social media posts
  • Websites with no references listed
  • Tabloids
  • Fake News

Examples of Popular Materials:

  • Popular or Opinion Magazines
  • Newspapers or news magazines
  • Trade Journals
  • Professional Networking sites (ex. Linked In, Indeed)
  • Social media (ex. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram)

Select Information Resources

Selecting the best information resources to answer your research question depends on the depth of the information you need and the time frame you wish to explore. Ask yourself what kind of information you need:

  • General or specific information?
  • Narrative analysis or statistical data?
  • Current or historical information?

Use the table below to help select the type of source that will best serve your purpose.  Remember that you will probably want to use more than one type to locate the wide variety of information that fully covers your research topic.

 

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Online Databases

You'll find journal articles from a wide variety of publications by searching online databases.  Some databases are more general, and other databases are discipline- or subject-specific.  How do you decide which database indexes journals that are related to your topic?

General Interest Databases are helpful for researching a general topic.  The publications indexed here cover the broadest range of topics and may include magazines and  journals related to business, current affairs, literature, religion, social sciences, technology, medicine and many others.  Examples include Academic Search Complete, Lexis Nexis Academic, and ArticleFirst.

Discipline-specific Databases focus on specific areas of study.  Most publications indexed in these databases are scholarly/academic journals or professional/trade pubications.  If you have difficulty finding information on your topic in a General Interest database, try a Discipline-specific database instead.  Examples include Ethnic Newswatch, Medline, and Philosopher's Index.

Subject-specific Databases are most helpful for in-depth research on a topic.  These databases usually contain only scholarly/academic journals or professional/trade publications and focus on a more narrow subject area.  Examples include ABI Inform (business and management), ERIC (Education), and PsycINFO (psychology).