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Library Research Methods: Find Articles

How to locate Library Resources

What are Periodicals?

Periodicals are any published materials that come out periodically, that is on a regular basis, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.

These include newspapers, magazines, trade and professional journals, and scholarly research journals.

The Library subscribes to a variety of print periodicals. Current issues are located in the Library's Periodical Reading Room on the main floor.

The articles in periodicals can be located by searching online Databases that are subscribed to by the Library. Many of these databases include the full-text of articles. 

What is a Scholarly Journal? What is Peer Review?

A scholarly journal publishes authoritative research articles by academics or experts in a discipline. The articles often undergo peer-review, that is they are evaluated by other experts before publication.

For more on the different types of periodicals see this chart:

Scholarly Journals vs. Popular Magazines vs. Trade Journals

Finding a Peer-Reviewed Research Article

1. Select Peer-Reviewed or Scholarly when you search

LIRN ArticleSearch, and most databases, have a button to check when you search or limit/filter your search results.
LIRN Articles screenshots 

Advanced Search page  Search Results page

Omnivore peer reviewed screenshot

2. Confirm that it is a Research Article

Limiting your search results to articles published in peer reviewed scholarly journals is the first step. 
Scholarly Journals include other types of documents, such as essays, literature reviews, book reviews, commentary, letters to the editor, announcements, etc. So...

How do I know if it is an actual research article? 

A research article reports the original work of a scholar and will present evidence and conclusions. 


A research article must have:

  • a named Author
  • a Bibliography or References
  • PDF format available
  • more than a few pages

 

Look at the structure of the article; many academic research articles use a standard format:

  • Abstract (summary of the whole article)
  • Introduction (why they did the research)
  • Materials & Methodology (how they did the research)
  • Results (what happened)
  • Discussion (what the results mean)
  • Conclusion (what they learned)
  • References (whose research they read)

DID YOU KNOW? Off-Campus Access to Library Resources

Library Databases for Articles, EBooks and more can be accessed off-campus by IOT students, staff and faculty from anywhere in the world with an internet connection!

Sign in to Canvas or select a database, then enter your IOT username and password (the same login id that you use for email, MainMenu, Moodle. etc.)

Use Databases to find Articles in Periodicals

Start with Multidisciplinary Databases to explore your topic. Click here for more Databases

To access Databases off-campus, use your IOT email username and password.