BIOL 205 - Ecology: Journal Articles

Select a peer-reviewed, scientific journal article to evaluate, summarize and discuss in class. The article must be reporting on a study in the assigned topic area.

Browse issues of a journal or search in them one by one. When you search in individual journals such as these, however, you will get fewer results than if you search in OneSearch or a database. So, if you do not get enough information, expand your search by searching in a database containing many publications.

In the peer-review process, in addition to a journal's editorial staff reading a submitted article, a panel of the author's peers who work or do research in the same field also read the article to verify that the work meets the standards of that field. 

To limit your search results to peer reviewed articles, look for a box to check on the results page. It might be in different locations for different databases:

An example in the search results page:           An example on the search box page:       

Sometimes when you look at an article there is an indication of whether the journal is peer reviewed, but sometimes you might have to Google the journal -- you can look for "About" or "Submission Guidelines" on an journal's website to see if they use peer review when accepting articles. If you're still not sure, ask a librarian or your professor. We are glad to help!

You do not have to read every word of a scholarly article--especially at first. Start with the abstract, then scan the introduction. This 5 minute video outlines a strategy for reading scholarly articles.

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