CSUSM Library Guides: SOC 331: Social Welfare Policies and Services (Professor Roche): Scholarly Journal Articles

Scholarly Journal Articles

Tutorial
This 6-minute tutorial will cover how to identify whether an article is "scholarly" and how to search for these types of articles.

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 can we mitigate social stigma around welfare?" break down your search into the main keywords: stigma, welfare
To get more focused results: Use quotation marks (" ") to keep phrases together Use AND to combine different keywords	stigma AND "social welfare"
To get broader results: Use OR to combine similar/associated keywords Truncate words that have a variety of endings with a *	("stigma" OR "stereotypes") AND (welfare or "social assistance") *ethnic = ethnic, ethnicity**
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