Human Services: Scholarly Articles

Use this search box to search some of our general databases all at once, or select a recommended database from the list below.

• Use keywords in library databases instead of sentences and questions. 
• To look for an exact phrase, type your phrase within quotation marks ("  "). The results will contain the exact words in the quotation marks.
• Use an asterisk (*) at the end of a root word, known as truncation, to retrieve results containing any form of the root word.
  • Example: teen* will find teens, teenage, teenager, teenagers
• Use filters to refine your results by subject terms/topics, date, type of publication, language, peer-reviewed, etc.
• Some databases use Boolean Operators. To narrow or expand your search combine keywords effectively using AND, OR, NOT operators, as shown below.

Is it a scholarly journal?

Would you like to use a journal but don't know if it comes from a scholarly journal? Search for the journal title in Ulrich's Web-- a directory that provides detailed information on all types of periodicals, including scholarly journals.

Scholarly journals are sometimes called academic journals, peer-reviewed journals, or refereed journals. In Ulrich's Web they call them refereed. Look for the referee jersey icon.

A scholarly article usually has a summary or abstract at the beginning. They're written by scholars for others scholars. At the end of a scholarly article you will see a reference list detailing the sources used to write the article. 

IMPORTANT: Please note that when you are looking a scholarly article an EDITORIAL or a BOOK REVIEW is not acceptable, even if the editorial or book review is published in a scholarly journal. That's because editorials and book reviews do not function as scholarly articles, which report new research or analyze a topic in depth. Instead, an editorial article gives an opinion, and a book review describes and evaluates new books related to the field of focus of a particular scholarly journal.