Welcome to the Scholarly Journal  Tutorial

Instructions

This tutorial is accompanied by a short quiz. 

To take the quiz:

• Click on the Take Quiz link at the end of the tutorial. 
• Please make sure to fill out the top portion of the quiz form completely. 
• When you have finished the quiz, click on the submit button.  
• After you have clicked on the submit button, a confirmation page will appear with your score for this quiz.  You will also receive an e-mail confirmation.  Keep this e-mail and show it to your instructor as proof that you took the tutorial. 

Please note: AOL e-mail users may have difficulty receiving confirmation e-mails.  Students should consider using their AVC e-mail address for these tutorials.

Images used by permission of EBSCO Publishing

Introduction

This tutorial will introduce you to scholarly journals and scholarly journal articles.  First, however, it is important to know a little about the class of materials to which journals belong: periodicals.

• You may have heard a librarian or your instructor use the word periodical and wondered just what they were talking about. 
  
• Very simply, a periodical is a publication that comes out on a regular recurring basis, e.g. once a year, once a month, twice a year, three times a year, 12 times a year, etc..  
  
• Newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals are all examples of periodicals.  

All periodicals, however, are not the same.  Some are published for the general public (magazines) , while others are intended for a scholarly audience (scholarly journals) .  For example:

• Magazines

  • Magazines are general interest publications.

  • The author of the article may not be identified.

  • Usually, no list of references is provided at the end of the article

  • Usually articles are non-technical in nature. 

  • National Geographic and People are examples of magazines.
    
    

• Scholarly Journals

  • Scholarly Journals are specialized publications for experts in different fields of academic and/or professional study.

  • The articles always have one or more authors.

  • A list of references can be found at the end of the article.

  • Many articles are technical and intended for specialists.  

  • Journal of Marriage and the Family is an example of a scholarly journal.

About Journal Articles

This tutorial is designed to help you identify a scholarly journal article.   You will also learn to recognize and understand the various sections found within such an article. 

First, it is important to understand the nature of a scholarly journal. A scholarly journal is a publication written by experts in a particular discipline (psychology, anthropology, physics, history, library and information science, etc.). Scholarly journals are often published on a monthly schedule, although many are published on a quarterly or semi-annual basis.

Journal articles are one of the most important ways scholars communicate. Articles in scholarly journals must be approved by a board of experts before they can be published.  This is called peer review.  Unlike many magazine articles, scholarly journal articles include the name of the author, the author's affiliation (university, company, etc.), and a list of references at the end of the article. All of this information gives you some assurance that the article is written by someone who is an expert in his/her field of study.

Scholarly journals are currently found in three formats in the Antelope Valley College Library: print, microfiche, and electronic. Print and microfiche versions are located at the Circulation Desk and must be requested by title and issue date. [For more information about these, please consult the Reference Librarian.] 

In the following tutorial, you will see examples of  the various parts of a journal article. The samples are taken from EBSCOhost, an electronic database. If you look at other electronic, print, or microfiche versions of scholarly journal articles, you may notice some differences in the visual layout or arrangement of information. However, the major sections of the article (abstract, methodology, results, conclusion, etc.) remain the same, regardless of format.

Parts of a Journal Article

Scholarly articles are generally divided into separate sections. These sections highlight different aspects of the research published in that article.

The sample article in this tutorial is typical of a research article in the social sciences. Please note: The titles of individual sections may vary somewhat between scholarly journals.

Searching for Electronic Journal Articles 

In the example below, you will see the keywords child sexual abuse in the Search field on EBSCOhost's basic search page. 

You may limit your search to journal (peer reviewed) articles by clicking in the check box next to the words Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals in the Limit Your Results section of the search screen.   You may also mark the check box next to the words Full Text to eliminate articles that only provide an abstract or summary of the article.    

Tip!  When searching for journal articles, it can be useful to add the word study or methodology to your search phrase. This will help eliminate journal articles that are not research studies from your search. 

Please be aware that the word journal may not necessarily appear in the title of the periodical.  Don't assume that if the title does not include the word journal that the publication is not scholarly.  Conversely, don't assume that the presence of the word journal means that the periodical is a scholarly publication.  For example, Ladies' Home Journal is a magazine, not a scholarly journal.

Search Results

The image below shows a list of records found in the EBSCOhost database.   Each record in the list is called a citation, and shows, among other things, the title, author, and publication date of the article in the database.   

Title of the Article

In the example below, the title of the article is the first thing you will see. Be sure you can understand what the title of the article means. If you can’t, the article may be too advanced.  If you decide to use a difficult article, keep a specialized dictionary (psychology, sociology etc.) handy for those difficult terms.

If you click on the words HTML Full Text or PDF Full Text after the brief article information, you will skip directly to the full text of the article. 

Retrieving the Article

To see an article, click on the title link. You will then be able to see the Full Record for the article.

Full Record

The example below shows part of a full record.  Here you will find the title, subject headings, source (journal name, publication date, etc.), authors' names, abstract, and full text of the article (if it is available) .

Authors' Credentials

In EBSCOhost, the authors' credentials (where they received their education, university where the author or authors teach, institutions they are affiliated with, or other information) are located at the end of the article (second example, below). Other journal sources may display this information differently.

In the example below from EBSCOhost, authors' affiliations are listed below the abstract.  Knowing where the authors teach or work is important. If the authors are professors at a university, or work at some other type of research institution, they are experts in their fields. This is your best assurance that the material you are reading is of good quality.

Abstract

The abstract on the full record screen will give you several clues and information about the study being described in the article. It may use many of the key terms that identify parts of a published study: method/methodology, study, results, conclusion, and provide a synopsis of what the study is about. 

After you read the abstract, you can decide whether this is a study you need for your research assignment or not.

Introductory Text

At the beginning of a scholarly article the authors will explain their reasons for doing the research study.  This is called the introductory text or introduction.

Review of the Literature

Within a few paragraphs you will see numerous references to other researchers' names.  These are references to previous studies closely related to the authors' research, as shown in the example below.

Method or Methodology

The method or methodology section of the article describes how the authors conducted their research. If surveys, experiments, interviews, tests, etc. were used in this study, they are described here. This is a very important section of the paper. It tells you how the data used to make conclusions at the end of the article was generated.

Results

The results section displays the raw data that was created by the activities described in the methods section. This data can be represented in the form of graphs, statistics, charts, etc. The data is used to support the ideas or hypotheses of the authors.

Discussion

In the discussion section the authors evaluate and comment on the data they have gathered. This section is often the easiest to understand – do not skip it. 

Conclusions/Recommendations

This section, often called Conclusions or Recommendations, presents the authors’ final statements concerning their work in this particular study. Here the authors discuss what their research means, and how it affects their particular field of study.

References

All of the articles referenced in this study are listed here. This can be a very good source of information if you are looking for additional research on your topic. Don’t forget to look at the list of references. The perfect article might just be listed there.

Congratulations! You have finished the Journal Tutorial. 

If you have any further questions regarding finding and identifying journal articles, please see the Reference Librarian. For more information about searching the EBSCOhost database, you may wish to consult the EBSCOhost Tutorial available on our Library Web site.