Identifying Scholarly Articles

Most of the time, we search for articles on the web or in library databases. Luckily, there are many scholarly articles available on the web or in databases, but how can we be sure that the article we want to use is scholarly? Below are some helpful tips.

Identifying Scholarly Articles Online

At first, it can seem difficult to identify scholarly articles, especially on the web or in library databases. This short video (3 minutes and 19 seconds) provides a brief overview that should make it easier.

"Identifying Scholarly Journal Articles" Links to an external site. by Deborah Moore, Highline College Library is licensed under CC BY 4.0 Links to an external site.

Parts of a Research Article

As the video mentioned, scholarly articles that report original research include specific sections, which makes it easier to identify them. Those sections are:

• an introduction, which sometimes includes a review of the other articles related to that topic (called a literature review),
• a methodology or methods section, which states the methods that were used to conduct the research,
• results of the research, which contains statistics, charts, and graphs,
• a discussion and/or conclusion section, in which the author explains how the results prove (or don't prove) the hypothesis of the research study, and which suggest ideas for future research studies on this same topic.