Guides: SSCI 301: Introduction to the Social Sciences (Fall 2022) (Professor Weigt): 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:
  - The American Political Science Review
  - Political Science Quarterly
  - International Journal of Politics, Culture, & Society
  - International Journal of Politics and Security
structured format (from A Political Science Guide):
- (ex. introduction, theoretical framework/literature review, case study, conclusion)
extensive references at the end

Tips	Examples
Use keywords, not long search phrases	Instead of searching for "How does economic inequality and systemic racism affect the American food system?" break down your search into the main keywords: economic inequality, systemic racism, food system, America
To get more focused results: Use quotation marks (" ") to keep phrases together Use AND to combine different keywords	"food system" AND "economic inequality"
To get broader results: Use OR to combine similar/associated keywords Truncate words that have a variety of endings with *	("racial bias" OR discrimination) AND ("food desert" OR "food system") *racis = racism, racist**
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