Scholarly Articles - FYW 100P - Introduction to Academic Writing / Szpila, Joseph - James P. Adams Library at James P. Adams Library

What is a scholarly article?

Scholarly articles are written by experts in specific academic disciplines for other experts. Students frequently use information from scholarly articles in their research.

Scholars write articles to share research and ideas in their fields of study. For that reason, articles contain information that is very specific. It is best to know something about your topic before searching for articles.
Scholarly articles are generally published by academic journals.
Journals will often put articles through a peer-review process prior to publication.
The library provides access to print and digital scholarly articles. The best way to find scholarly articles on your research topic is to use an article database or Google Scholar.

Article Databases - All Subjects

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Indexes and abstracts over 11,000 magazines and scholarly journals in all subject areas with over 7,000 in full text.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
RIC currently participates in all 15 JSTOR Arts & Sciences archive collections and the Life Sciences archive collection. Journals in archive collections are always included from volume 1 number 1, and related prior titles, but stop short of current issues. RIC also subscribes to 34 current journals in JSTOR. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to search for scholarly literature. Set up "Library Links" to discover Adams Library materials.

Subject Databases - Examples

America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
A complete bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Published since 1964, the database comprises over 490,000 bibliographic entries for periodicals dating back to 1954, providing a research tool for students and researchers of US and Canadian history.
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Contains peer-reviewed business articles and journals, company profiles and reports, as well as case studies, industry profiles, SWOT analyses, books/monographs, magazines and trade publications, market research reports, product reviews, and country reports
ERIC This link opens in a new window
The ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to educational-related literature. ERIC provides coverage of journal articles, conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books and monographs. Using this version you may search ERIC alone, or combine it with other EBSCOhost databases.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
PsycINFO provides access to international literature in psychology and related disciplines, such as psychiatry, education, business, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, law, linguistics, and social work. Nearly all records contain nonevaluative summaries, and all records from 1967 to the present are indexed using the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
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PubMed comprises over 22 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of biomedicine and health, covering portions of the life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering.
SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
SocINDEX offers comprehensive coverage of sociology, social work and criminology & criminal justice. Use this database to find academic resources and author profiles in: demography, ethnic & racial studies, gender studies, marriage & family, political sociology, religion, rural & urban sociology, social development, social psychology, social structure, socio-cultural anthropology, sociological history, sociological research, sociological theory, substance abuse & other addictions, violence and other topics in the social sciences. SocINDEX with Full Text contains full text for hundreds of journals dating back to 1908. This database also includes full text for books, monographs, and conference papers.