How do I find scholarly journal articles?
Periodicals or Magazines or Journals
Librarians sometimes use these terms interchangeably, but they don't necessarily mean the same thing. They all refer to material that is published on a periodic basis.
Magazines = popular titles like Time, Newsweek, etc.
Journals = academic or scholarly titles like Mennonite Quarterly Review.
Most databases let you limit your search to scholarly or peer reviewed journals. You will need to evaluate individual articles based on a number of criteria to see if they fit the criteria. Scholarly journals publish editorials, letters to the editors, book reviews and other materials that are not necessarily scholarly.
Scholarly articles tend to have these characteristics:
- Often gives you some information about the author, their academic degrees and/or the university/college they are affiliated with.
- Generally provides an abstract or summary preceding the article.
- Will have footnotes or endnotes citing the sources the author used in their research.
How do I get the full-text of an article I found in a database?
If the full-text is available, you'll see a link to open the text in PDF or HTML. If no full-text is available through the database you are using, look for "Check here to locate this article" or "Find Full-Text" or something similar and click on the link. This searches all our databases to see if we own the particular article you are interested in. You will either get a link to the article or a message that it is not available in the EMU databases. If full-text is not available, use the Interlibrary loan link to login to EMUshare to request this material through interlibrary loan.
