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SCI 105 Stave: Peer-reviewed database choices

This guide supports your annotated bibliography project - mitigating climate change

Why use articles from library databases in your research?

Why use articles from library databases in your research?

  • Journal articles are often more specific and current than books
  • Sometimes journal articles will be the ONLY place to find information on a current artist or on a specific work.
  • The Library’s databases contain thousands of articles from newspapers, magazines, trade journals, and scholarly journals. That means you can NARROW DOWN your search to academic sources, like scholarly journals. 
  • You cannot find and access the full text of most of these journal articles through Google

Sources for more specific info (articles from library databases)

Search the database:

Example from Academic Search Complete:

screen shot of a more complex search using the Academic Search Premier database. The search reads: main idea: climate change; then in the search box below, we see narrowing terms, "mitigation OR adaptation OR response. The annotation reads, I decided to try out a more complex search strategy. By putting OR between related and similar words, I am telling the search engine to find me any articles that mention all or some of these words WITH climate change.

Screen shot of part of this database's advanced search options showing the limiter scholarly peer reviewed journals with the box checked. Annotation reads: Because this database holds things other than peer-reviewed articles, check "Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals to limit your results to those kinds of publications.

Database tutorial:

Search the database:

Example from ProQuest database:

Screen shot of the proquest search page, with the search, on a single line, climate change mitigation. Below the search we see the box next to peer-reviewed is checked. The annotation reads: As I noted for Academic Search Complete, you can limit your results to only peer-reviewed journals. However, this database also holds other things, so you might sometimes want to take this limiter off so you can see magazines and newspaper articles too.

Database tutorial:

Search the database:

Example from the ScienceDirect database:

screen shot of the science direct search page with climate change mitigation typed into the keyword search box

Screen shot of one of the results of our search chowing an article that notes, Abstract Only, and has a link reading "purchase PDF". Next to it the annotation shows two boxes checked, "Open access" and "open archive". A second annotation reads: Unfortunately, not every article that appears in your results will be "full text". To avoid a certain amount of disappointment, check Open Access and Open Archive to see only full text articles.

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