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Professional Studies: Finding Scholarly Articles

This guide provides information about MTSU library resources pertaining to Professional Studies.

What is a Peer Reviewed Article?

This video--courtesy of Vanderbilt University--explains the difference between scholarly journals and popular magazines. (3:10)

Find Articles

Limit Your Results:      

How to Find Scholarly Peer Reviewed Articles

Scholarly peer reviewed articles are included in many library databases. Use a research guide to find the best database for your subject or use the Scholarly Articles tab in the JEWL search box on the library homepage. You can also use the library's Databases A-Z tool to find a list of library databases by subject or discipline. Here is a sample search using the JEWL Search Scholarly Articles tab on the library home page. 

Please note:  There are many academic and scholarly journals that do not contain peer-reviewed articles.  Using the scholarly articles filter will give you a list of academic journal articles that are peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed.  You must do the extra step of researching your specific journal to determine if it's peer-reviewed. 

1. Enter your keywords / topics. 

2.  On the search results page, use the filters in the left column under the "Limit To" menu:

  • Select "Scholarly/Peer Reviewed/Academic"
  • Select "Online (Full Text)" to view results from the online databases with full-text links to the article PDFs.  
  • Select "Online + Print" to view results from both the online databases and the print journals owned by the library. 
  • An optional "Publication Date" limiter is also available.

 

Finding the Full Text

Look for one of these icons in the article record: 
pdf icon
html icon
If you don't see one of those, click this:
 

to find links to the article in another database or to see if the library has the article in print.

If the library does not have a copy, you can order it for free through Interlibrary Loan.

If you have a citation that did not come from a library database, try using our JEWL Search or Google Scholar, which may provide you with a link to a library subscription offering.