Scholarly articles are intended for an academic audience and are typically published by a university or other non-profit press. These articles report original research or provide in-depth analysis on a particular topic. Often, these publications are peer-reviewed, or screened by experts in the field.
Not all materials are peer-reviewed. there are 4 main types of periodical materials: 1.research journals , 2.news and opinion, 3. professional and trade magazines, and 4. popular magazines. Most peer-reviewed materials are journals.
1. Focus on finding journals. When you search the database, check the settings for scholarly material, this will return only results returned are scholarly research articles.
2. Evaluate each article for the type of review process the journal uses. While these tools are useful, they are not foolproof. It's a good idea to evaluate each individual article you use to make sure that it comes from a scholarly publication.
If you are not sure whether a particular journal is scholarly/academic/peer-reviewed, check Ulrichs or Google Scholar, or try locating directly at the journal web site. It will usually have and About or Authors section that tells how articles in the journal is evaluated.
Open access resources have a number of benefits, the most obvious is that they are usually free! But there are several others including: results are made available more quickly so things are more up-to-date,, and any kind of digital content, including text, images, raw and processed data, audio/video and software can be part of a digital archive. Finally, it helps show the real impact of current research because it can be more easily used and cited in other works (including yours)!