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BRS 100: Explorations in Border Studies (Professor Ardon) [Spring 2022]

Scholarly Journal Articles

What is a Scholarly Article? from Kimbel Library on Vimeo.

 

How do we know a source we've found is a scholarly journal article? Look for these clues:

  • written by scholars (with affiliations to universities or research institutions)
  • written for other scholars and students (and therefore difficult to read)
  • published in an academic journal with a peer-review process
    • Here are some examples:
      • Critical Sociology
      • Journal of Applied Sociology
      • American Sociological Review
  • structured format (abstract, introduction, etc...)
  • extensive references at the end

 

Tips Examples
Use keywords, not long search phrases Instead of searching for "How has the Covid-19 pandemic response impacted border policies?"  break down your search into the main keywords:

Covid-19, border policies

To get more focused results:

Use quotation marks (" ") to keep phrases together

Use AND to combine different keywords

 

 

"border policies" AND Covid-19

To get broader results:

Use OR to combine similar/associated keywords

Truncate words that have a variety of endings with a *

 

("border policies" or borderless)

 

politic* = politics, political
Look for ways to limit your search in the database You can often limit by type of article (scholarly and peer-reviewed) & year of publication