Information Literacyfor the Health Science Student

Lesson 3: Scholarly Literature

There are several types of periodicals that you will come across while doing research.

Each type of periodical can contribute information for your research.

Popular Magazines

A magazine is “a printed collection of texts (essays, articles, stories, poems), often illustrated, that is produced at regular intervals (excluding newspapers).”1

1magazine. (2011). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/356421/magazine

What makes a popular periodical?

• Articles provide general information. They are written for a broad readership.

• Journalists write the articles.• Publications are found in most

bookstores.• Publications are usually illustrated

with color glossy photos.

Trade and Technical Periodical• Trade and technical journals and magazines

serve those working in industry and commerce.

• Major discoveries in science, manufacturing methods, or business practice tend to create a new subdivision of technology, with its own practitioners and, more often than not, its own magazine.

• Articles in these magazines tend to be highly factual and accurately written, by people deeply immersed in their subjects. 2

2history of publishing. (2011). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/482597/publishing

Scholarly• Scholarly journal articles are written by

and for professional experts in a particular subject area.

• Academic institutions or professional organizations publish most.

• They present original research, experiments or theories.

• Articles provide authoritative information acceptable for a research paper.

Peer-Reviewed Journal

• A peer-reviewed periodical is a specific type of scholarly publication.

• Articles are judged by an independent panel of experts (scholarly or scientific peers).

• Articles are not published when rejected by a majority of the peers.

How Peer-review Works.

A scholar develops an opinion about an important topic and writes a paper.

The scholar wants the article published and sends it to a journal read by other scholars.

The editor of the journal reads the paper.

She thinks it’s an excellent article and wants to publish it. But, she’s an editor not a scholar.

In order to verify her belief that the article is excellent, she invites other scholars, the author’s equals or peers, in the same field to review the article. The peers determine the quality of the information therein.

The peers look at many things.• They examine logic of the article.• They determine the quality and exactness of

the research.• They review the accuracy of the citations• They refer to other works on the same topic to

gain perspective on the subject matter.• They assess the academic style of the article.

The peers read the article and review the evidence that the author presents.

The peers pass judgment as to whether the article is fit for academia.

If the research is deemed reliable, the article is published.

Doing research in the academic world requires that conclusions must be based on verifiable evidence.

The intention of the peer-review process is to qualify that the conclusions made in a published paper are based on verifiable evidence.

If you are writing a paper for class your professor wants your research to be based upon verifiable evidence.

In the professional setting you want the best information available to you. You want information that is peer-reviewed

Where do you find peer-reviewed articles?

Finding Scholarly Articles

There are many resources available to you. You can find scholarly, peer-reviewed articles from various sources.

However, not all the sources you come across are of equal quality.

It’s important to know the differences.

Google ScholarGoogle Scholar is a tool used by many to find journal articles for their research. However, Google Scholar returns a mixture of informational types.

Google Scholar is strongest in the sciences.

However, the researcher must look carefully to evaluate the materials on the results list.

The result are not always useful. Google Scholar offers little in the way of limiting the results of a search.

When scrolling through a results list it is possible to find chapters from books, journal articles, patents, and even legal cases.

A Limited Tool

Google Scholar indexes many scholarly sources, but also includes items that are not scholarly.

Google Scholar indexes a limited subset of scholarly literature in all fields. You may miss an important article.

Google Scholar indexes publisher websites, which often offers to sell access to journal articles.

A Good Tool

Google scholar is excellent for citation tracking. One article can lead you to many, many others.

However, Google Scholar provides few tools to help the researcher limit or focus the results.

Google Scholar is a good tool with many assets that the researcher will find useful as they prepare their work.

Professional Organizations Many professional organizations like the American Medical Association and the American Nursing Association have their own journal and journal websites. Many articles are freely available from the online journals and may be read and downloaded to your computer.

But, not all of the scholarly articles in these journals are free for you to use.

Professional website offer a way to find the latest articles in a journal. This is excellent for building a bibliography of materials for your research.

PubMedThe National Library of Medicine offers PubMed as a free tool for researchers in the health sciences.

PubMed comprises more than 24 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.

Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

http://www.pubmed.gov

PubMed Limiters

The articles listed in PubMed come from a variety of sources.

Limiters in PubMed facilitate retrieving specific scholarly literature.

PubMed is the best open access tool for searching health sciences literature on the Internet

PubMed to Full-text

Not every article cited in PubMed is available as free full-text.

Free full-text links are available to publishers sites or to PubMed Central.

PubMed Central (PMC)PMC is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).

There are over 1530 full participation journals in PMC.

PMC contains a large selection of research articles funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Portable Articles

The journals in PMC are available as Acrobat .pdf files or viewable in the PubMed Reader.

PMC offers a small portion of the articles cited PubMed.

However, it is an important collection that grows daily.

Subscription Databases

At institutions of higher-education, like Eastern University, there are subscription databases available for student researchers.

Many subscription databases offer citations and full-text in the health sciences.

CINAHLCINAHL® is the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature.

CINAHL® covers nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines.

This database indexes more than 3,000 journals with more than 2.9 million records dating back to 1981.

It offers complete coverage of English-language nursing journals and publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses' Association.

SAGE journals

Sage Premier or Sage journals online provides access to hundreds of scholarly journals.

The article available tag indicates that this journal is available for viewing and can be saved, downloaded, emailed, or viewed online using the built in Adobe Acrobat reader.

Interlibrary Loan• Can’t find the full-text that you

need. Try interlibrary loan. • Eastern University offers

RapidILL for its community. Articles are usually sent to your e-mail within 24 hours of filing a request.

• The National Library of Medicine

offers LoansomeDoc for those not associated with an academic library. This is a pay-for service.

Next lesson will discuss the anatomy of a peer-reviewed journal article.

Do the student activity for this lesson. After that proceed to the next lesson.

Revised Tuesday, February 10, 15