Library Research Guide
NOTE: Peer-reviewed works are considered scholarly; but not all scholarly works have been submitted through a peer review process.
Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory provides information about more than 210,000 journals. If you are unsure if an article you found is scholarly or whether it has been through the peer review process, Ulrich's is a great place to look up the title of the journal to find out more information.
Titles that are peer-reviewed are indicated by the black and white referee's jersey ("refereed" is another term for peer-reviewed). Note that there may be some parts of the journal (e.g. letters to the editor, book reviews, etc.) that are not peer-reviewed.
Keywords: It can be helpful to track the terminology/keywords that work best as well as possible synonyms and experiment with different search terms.
Advanced Search/Guided Search: these options offer multiple search boxes allowing greater control and use of Boolean Operators (AND & OR & NOT).
Examples of advanced searches:
Subject Headings: "Subject Headings" or "Descriptors" help narrow your search. These tags group items by category. Different databases recognize different terms and as you find them, you can construct your search using the terminology of that database.
Truncation: Using truncation, a search for teen* collects "teen", "teens", "teenager", "teenagers", etc. by adding all possible endings to the word stem (broadens your search while staying on topic). The truncation symbol may differ by resource.
Wildcard: Use "wildcard". For example: wom?n searches for "women" or "woman"
Help: look for the “Help” section or Ask a Librarian.