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Physician Assistant

Resources that connect you to the information you need to succeed

How it starts...

Professor, “You need to find a relevant, scholarly article for this assignment.”

Thinking to yourself, “Umm…  what is a scholarly article and where do I find one?”

Scholarly vs. Peer Review

A scholarly resource is a resource that is written by an expert in his or her field. Some things to look for on a scholarly resource, specifically a scholarly article would be: publication information, what journal the article is from, Author(s)’ names and affiliations, references/citations, and a general ‘formal’ appearance. May or may not have a DOI (digital object identification) number.

A scholarly source is not always peer-reviewed or refereed. Peer-review means that the scholarly source has been reviewed by several peers before it has been published. This is not to say that scholarly articles are not reviewed before publication, but Peer-review normally means it was reviewed more diligently by other experts in the same field. You may have to check the journal’s website to REALLY know if it is peer-review.

screenshot of a scholarly article pointing out the tips for evaluation. publication information and author affilaition

 

Great! Now how do I find these things?

The library pays for access to scholarly materials and the easiest way is to search ArticlesPlus; which is SUPER multidisciplinary.

 

 

You have this scholar/peer-review articles filter in health databases too: CINAHL, SocINDEX, SportDiscus, and APA PsycINFO.

screen shot of EBSCO database to show where you can filter by scholarly journal