Scholarly articles are academic sources, written by experts within a field to expand on existing knowledge.
They are often works of original research and may describe the design and results of an original research project or experiment.
They might also be review articles, where the scholars are taking an overview of the published research on a given topic.
What is Peer-Review?
Scholarly articles generally go through the peer-review process, meaning that the information has been evaluated by other experts before being published. This means that these types of sources have high credibility, which is one of the reasons your instructors will often require that you use them in your research paper.
However, these sources are often written for other experts, so they can be tricky to understand. Read on for tips on how to get the most of these academic sources!
Where can I find these articles?
Scholarly (or peer-reviewed) articles are published in scholarly journals, which can be found online through open-access publishers, our online databases, or Google Scholar. Check out the tab above for more tips on how to search library databases.
Because they have an academic focus, scholarly journals tend to be subject specific. Ask your instructor for recommendations on scholarly journals you should read, and then check back with the Library to see if those titles are available.
How are these articles organized?
Depending on the subject matter, scholarly articles tend to be organized in the following sections.
Abstract – all scholarly articles will provide a summary of the article that briefly describes:
- the purpose (why was this article published? What were the researchers interested in discovering?)
- their methodology (how did the researchers decide to investigate their interests/research question?)
- their results (what were the researcher's findings?)
- and the conclusion (what is the meaning of these findings?)
Introduction - first portion of article provides background on the researchers' aims and purposes
- what is the research question?
- what is the larger context (how does this study fit into the field overall)?
- does this fill a gap in the field?
- may also include a literature review (relevant research that has already been published)
Methods - how the experiment or study designed
- may also include theoretical approaches
Results - what the researchers actually found
- data, in the form of tables and graphs
Discussion and / or conclusion - how did the results support the initial claim (or not?)
- the limitations of the study or experiment
References - the sources they consulted
- citations for other people's work
- use to find more relevant papers!
It can be overwhelming to read all of these sections but you do not have to read them in order! Because each section serves a different purpose, you can read them out of order to get a better understanding of what (and why) you are reading.
