Peer-reviewed journals are how scholars and researchers share their research with each other. That research might take the form of experiments, or studies, or even just the close reading of a text or group of texts. They write up their research in detail - if they interviewed a group of people, for example, they would tell you what kind of people they interviewed, how they chose people to interview, what questions they asked, and all kinds of other details that tell you more about how to interpret their research. Then they send their paper to an editor, who sends it out to other researchers and scholars in similar fields. They evaluate whether to accept the article, reject the article, or ask the author to make changes.
Professors will often ask you to use peer-reviewed articles for their assignments. Why?
Start from the Iowa Valley One Search on the MCC library page.
You can use the Iowa Valley One Search to search all our databases at once. On the library webpage under "Find Articles" there is a list of our databases, and you can always choose to search a specific one. There are several geared towards health professions and education professions. I use the Iowa Valley One Search instead of choosing any specific databases because it will search all of our databases as well as our print materials.
Let's say I want to learn about dating apps. Every so often you see articles in the news speculating about whether dating apps are bad for society, and I want to know more about what researchers are finding out about dating apps.
If you're used to searching Google, you might be used to typing in whole questions. If I wanted to research this question on Google, I might type in "dating apps effect on society" or "what effect do dating apps have on society." Database search engines don't have the natural language processing power that Google has, so it's harder to get good results that way. It's better to think about what keywords will show up in articles that you're looking for.
I've typed "dating apps" into the Iowa Valley One Search bar in quotes because I want to find articles that have "dating apps" as a single phrase, not articles that have "dating" somewhere and "apps" somewhere else. Another option is to use what is called Boolean search. This means that instead of using the quotes for single words, you could type in dating AND apps. You can use AND, OR, and NOT (make sure to capitalize these words.
How to use Boolean Search Terms:
Use AND in a search to: narrow your results, tell the database that ALL search terms must be present in the resulting records, example: cloning AND humans AND ethics
Use OR in a search to connect two or more similar concepts (synonyms), broaden your results, telling the database that ANY of your search terms can be present in the resulting records, example: cloning OR genetics OR reproduction
Use NOT in a search to: exclude words from your search, narrow your search, telling the database to ignore concepts that may be implied by your search terms, example: cloning NOT sheep.
Sometimes the vocabulary that research articles use is very different from the vocabulary that regular people use. If you search for heart attacks, you won't have as much luck as if you search for myocardial infarction. If you're not getting good results, you may need to play around with your search terms.
To get the peer reviewed results for your research papers, make sure to click on "Peer Reviewed" and, you can adjust the publication date for newer resources.
We got 900 search results. We just need to figure out how to focus the topic... let's click on "Subject" on the left side of the screen and then "Show more" at the bottom of the list. A pop up menu will appear with a long list of subjects.
So we can narrow down our results by subject. A lot of these articles are looking at HIV and AIDS, and how dating apps might influence high-risk sexual behaviors. That's something that might make a good topic for a paper! Another topic that might be interesting would be dating apps and mental health. Let's go up to the search bar and add in - AND "mental health".
Only 317 results. Another strategy might be to think about other keywords you could use. Do all the articles I'm looking for use the keyword "dating apps"? Maybe some researchers find the word "app" too informal and they're using "applications" or "services" instead. Maybe I want to include internet dating sites from the pre-smartphone days, and "online dating" or "internet dating" would turn up better results. I'm going to add in the word ghosting and use an advanced search.
Using the Boolean search of AND with my search terms in quotations so that it searches for every word in the article, and using more keywords helped me find peer reviewed articles that are much more along the lines of what I was looking for.
Another strategy you can use is snowballing. We've found one article that looks really good. What articles did that author read for background information? What articles are cited in that one really good article?
This article has a full text pdf and full text html. It also has a long list of references the author's used to cite their sources. These sources may also be a great help to you in finding sources on your typic.
That's really useful information - a few more studies we can look at to provide additional information, but also, the author tells you there hasn't been a lot of research done in this area. They author of this paper is probably paying attention to all the research that's being done in this field, so if they haven't found more, there probably isn't more to find. So maybe I have enough to work with; maybe I need to switch to a different topic where more research has been done.
Now that you've found your articles, you have to figure out how to cite them. Luckily, our databases usually have citations built in for us. On the right hand side of the page, click on "Cite". Several different citation formats are available, but mostly used are APA, MLA, and Chicago. Scroll through the list to find the one you need and you can copy and paste. Always go back and check the citation to make sure it is correct. You can check with the writing tutor in the Student Success Center for assistance with your writing and your citations.
I hope this research guide will get you a little more comfortable with searching for peer-reviewed articles. If you have any questions, or if you are having trouble finding what you're looking for, ask a librarian - you can visit the library in person, give us a phone call, email us at mcclibrary@iavalley.edu, or use our 24-hour chat reference service. Good luck with your research!