Finding Research Articles and Refereed Journals Tutorial 
Summary of Main Points

 Most research uses one of the following forms of data collection: observation, questionnaires, interviews, or controlled experiments. Types of research include case studies, user studies, experimental research, and survey research.

 Guide to identifying research articles:

 Research articles tend to be highly specific in nature, relate to a particular field, or specialty within a field, and are written by authors who have done research in the field. The target audience is other researchers, colleagues, students and specialists in the same field. Research articles are written for the scholarly community, rather than a general audience. The language is formal, generally does not use the first person, and includes jargon used in the field. Research articles are written to contribute to the knowledge base of the discipline and can vary in length, but are typically five to fifty pages long and may have numerous authors. The organization, institute, or professional society the authors belong to will be listed. Generally the article is written at a sophisticated enough level that the reader will need to read it more than once in order to understand and evaluate the article.The following list of headings should be used as a guideline when looking for research articles: 

• Title
• Abstract 
• Introduction/literature review
• Purpose of the study/hypothesis/problem statement
• Methodology/procedures/research design
• Major findings/results/analysis/discussion
• Summary/conclusion/ideas for future studies/implications
• Works cited/references/acknowledgements
• Notes/appendices
• Tables, charts, figures, statistical data (throughout the article)

 Each issue will have a publishing date, volume number and issue number. A refereed journal may have one to fifty articles, with most having eight to eighteen. Very little, if any, advertising or photographs are included in refereed journals and generally they will use black print on white paper. The size of the journal may vary from a small paperback size to a large magazine format. Refereed journals may contain book reviews, literature reviews, and essays. Therefore, just because an article is published in a refereed journal, it does not necessarily mean that it is a research article! The majority of journals are published four to six times per year and are often published by a professional society, organization, or research institution. Refereed journals have a peer review process. The editorial board and the organizations they are affiliated with are listed in the journal. Information about what types of papers are chosen for publication, the selection process, the length of papers accepted, how to submit a paper, and a listing of where the refereed journal is indexed is often provided.

Key thoughts to remember: 

• Library Literature (Lib Lit) and Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) are the two databases that will be most useful in completing the LIS 380 assignment.
• Once you have located an article in one of these databases, copy down the information contained in the Source field. This is the information needed to locate the article.
• Search the telnet version of the catalog to determine where the material you need is located.
• Online sources can be valuable tools if they are valid, unbiased, accurate, and emanate from trusted sources.
• Databases supplied by the same vendor will look and act similarly.
• Different databases have different truncation symbols. LISA uses an asterisk, Lib Lit uses a dollar sign, and the telnet version of the catalog uses a question mark.
• To limit results in LISA to research articles, include terms related to research in your keyword search.
• Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory is a good source to use to determine where a serial is indexed and if it is refereed. 

 

 

 If you want to learn more about databases, how they are organized, and how to use them, check out the University of Illinois' Article Database Tutorial: http://www.library.uiuc.edu/ugl/Bi/Research_Skills/6_Search/databases/

 Here is a link to journals related to Library and Information Science (refereed journals are indicated by a yellow star): http://www.library.uiuc.edu/lsx/Journals.html

 For advice on how to evaluate different types of periodicals (magazines, newspapers, general interest, and academic) look at this University of Illinois site: http://www.library.uiuc.edu/ugl/bi/Research_Skills/7_Evaluate/JNvMAG/

 For a complete list of electronic journals available at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, go to the following site: http://www.library.uiuc.edu/proxy/go.asp?url=http://www.library.uiuc.edu/EResource/all.asp?type=E%26start=A