Library databases contain scholarly journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles, reports, and much more that probably won't be available freely on the Internet. That's because much of the materials needed to do proper research are behind paywalls. The library helps you by giving you access to these materials through databases.
Discovery - A discovery search is a kind of search that search multiple databases at once. This is great if you have a very developed search strategy, but just starting out it can be overwhelming when you return 1 million+ articles! Another downside to discover searches is that they do not search every database and often favor certain databases over others. Our discover search is called GALILEO Discover and is the default search on our homepage.
Multidisciplinary - Some databases cover many different discipline areas. These are great alternatives to discovery searching when you are first starting out. You will find articles from many different areas though, so be careful about what is appropriate for your topic and assignment. Examples include Academic Search Complete and Research Library.
Subject Specific - Most databases are subject-specific, which means they cover only one specific subject area or group of subject areas. This means that doing a search in these databases is narrowing your field down tremendously and you will only get results from the subject you are searching. Examples include Education Source or PsycINFO.
Publisher Specific - Some databases have only content from a specific publisher and can be multidisciplinary or subject-specific. For example, the database Science Direct only has content from the publisher Elsevier.
Specialized - Some databases have specialized content and can be used to find specific kinds of information. For example, Westlaw has information about legal cases and news stories.
If you are unfamiliar or intimidated by the structure of a scholarly article, use this graphic to explore the various parts in order to help you better understand what each part does and how it can help you understand the article.
Peer-reviewed articles, also known as refereed articles, refer to articles that are published in a peer-reviewed journal.
What makes a peer-reviewed journal, 'peer-reviewed', is that all the articles in them have undergone a rigorous review process by other experts in the field.
After the author/s submit the article to a peer-reviewed journal, the editors send it out to other scholars in the same field, i.e. the author's peers, to seek their professional opinion on the quality of the scholarship, its relevance to the field, its appropriateness for the journal, and so on.
The author/s receive the following typical feedback:
Adapted from "A Guide to Peer Reviewed Articles" - Franklin Pierce University Library Guide
There are different types of peer-reviewed journal articles. These include:
- the main people working in a field
- recent major advances and discoveries
- significant gaps in the research
- current debates
- ideas of where research might go next
Derived from "A Guide to Peer Reviewed Articles" - Franklin Pierce University Library Guide
Finding peer-reviewed articles in database aggregators, like GALILEO, and individual databases is a relatively straight-forward process.
Most library databases have a limiter that you can select to refine your results to peer-reviewed articles.
If you conduct your search in Advanced Search mode, most Advanced Search forms have a limiter to restrict to peer-reviewed articles so that you can limit your results from the get-go.