Scholarly journal articles are very important sources for research as they contain current research in a given field and often focus on a particular aspect of a topic.
Scholarly journals are also referred to as "academic," "peer-reviewed," or "refereed" journals.
For more information, please refer to: Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from Other Periodicals.
Scholarly journal articles are very important sources for research as they contain current research in a given field and often focus on a particular aspect of a topic.
To locate articles on your topic, use an index or database such as the ones recommended on this guide.
For information on how to effectively use a database, please go to Health Sciences Research: Database Searching. Here you will learn the difference between a basic and advanced search; how to identify key concepts or terms; and database limits.
CINAHL and Pre-CINAHL: Index to English-language journals in nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy and other allied health fields.
MEDLINE: Medline (via Ovid) is a database of citations and abstracts in the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, health care systems, allied health, and preclinical sciences. It contains more than 26 million references from over 6.500 worldwide journals.
PubMed: Medline (via PubMed) is a database of citations and abstracts in the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, health care systems, allied health, and preclinical sciences. It contains more than 26 million references from over 6,500 worldwide journals.
SPORTDiscus: SPORTDiscus is ideal for researchers studying different aspects of fitness, health, and sport studies. Content areas range from sports physiology and sports psychology to physical education and recreation.
Sports Medicine & Education Index: Indexes peer-reviewed journals, report literature, conference proceedings, trade magazines, patents, popular press, and more. Formerly Physical Education Index.
CBCA @ Proquest: Indexes articles newspapers, magazines, and academic journals. Particularly useful for finding grey literature.
Gender Studies Database: Indexes and abstracts covering the full spectrum of gender-related scholarship, including gender studies, ethnic studies, health issues and sexual diversity.
Global Health: Information related to human health and communicable diseases.
Human Kinetics Library: The Human Kinetics Library is a digital hub for sport and exercise studies. The Human Kinetics Library contains authoritative information about physical activity, fitness, kinesiology, biomechanics, physiology of exercise, sport psychology, coaching, adapted fitness, and disability and sport and on specific sports. Includes Human Kinetics Core Collection.
PAIS: Covers publications on global public policy and social issues.
Sabinet African Journals: Sabinet African Journals offers the most comprehensive, searchable collection of full-text African electronic journals available on one platform. Over 600 journal titles in 10 collections are available, including Medicine & Health.
APA PsycINFO via OVID (formerly PsycINFO): Health topics from a psychological perspective.
Academic Search Complete: This database is a multi-disciplinary database which provides indexing (with abstracts) to peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, monographs and reports.
Web of Science: This large, multidisciplinary database provides access to bibliographic information, author abstracts, and cited references from scholarly journals and conference proceedings. A cited reference search enables you to find articles that cite a previously published work.
Google Scholar: Use the Google Scholar search engine to locate articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles published on the "open" web. Google Scholar also enables you to find articles that cite a previously published work.
When searching Omni for articles, use the filters located along the left-hand side of the search screen to refine your results. Typically, university-level assignments require students to use articles from peer reviewed journals, so applying the filter to Peer-reviewed Journals and Articles is useful, but remember that it is not 100% accurate, so you should evaluate every article you select to ensure that it is indeed a scholarly article published in a peer-reviewed journal.