Use this flowchart to help you determine the type of a source (non-academic, academic non-peer reviewed, academic peer reviewed primary source, or academic peer reviewed secondary source).
For the purposes of this assignment, your popular (non-academic) sources might include:
You can find popular articles and websites using Google. Even Wikipedia will work for this part of the assignment. You can find books using the Library's Discover Search. Remember that if you are not able to physically access the library (e.g. if you are studying online) you will need to use ebooks (electronic books). Most of the books in the TRU library are academic, but some of them are not, and you can tell that they are non-academic because they do not have in-text citations.
Remember the Flowchart (see above) and the three characteristics of academic sources; if you can show evidence that your source does NOT meet any one of these three criteria, then it is non-academic. In other words, you have a non-academic source if you can demonstrate just ONE of the following:
Example of a non-academic source (a web page in this case):
Most (if not all) of your peer reviewed academic sources will be articles published in scholarly journals. Start your search with the library's Discover Search. If you don't find what you need, try some of the library's scientific databases.
Remember that you are looking for research articles. Scholarly journals mostly publish research articles, but they also publish things like editorials, letters, and book reviews, which are excellent sources but would not satisfy the requirements for this part of the assignment - because even in a peer reviewed publication, these other types of writing do not usually go through the peer review process.
For an article to be considered peer reviewed, it must meet all of the criteria for an academic source, plus one more:
A. the author is an expert in the field who is paid to do the research
B. there is a bibliography
C. there are in-text citations
D. the article has been reviewed by one or more of the author's; peers (i.e., experts in the same or a closely related field)
A. Is the Author an Expert?
Someone is considered an expert in a field if they:
Scholarly articles will almost always give the authors' affiliations -- i.e. who they they work for -- at either on the top or the bottom of the first or last page. You can also Google search authors' names to find out about their qualifications.
Example: Author names and affiliations (organizations they work for) found at the top of an article
B. Is there is a bibliography?
A quick scan near the end of an article should answer this. Remember that "references" is another world for bibliography.
Example:
C. Are there are in-text citations?
A quick scan of the body text should determine this.
Example:
If you have found EVIDENCE for A, B, & C, then you have an academic article. Now you just need to confirm whether it is a peer-reviewed source.
D. Is there evidence the article has been peer reviewed?
There are two kinds of evidence that an article has been peer reviewed. One form of evidence is dates on the article itself indicating when it was originally received by the journal, when it was revised, and when it was finally accepted for publication. If there is just an "accepted" date, then you don't have sufficient evidence that it actually went through peer review before publication. If the article includes a "revised" date, that is evidence that a peer review (and revision) took place.
Example: A "revised" date on an article is evidence that it underwent a peer review process (which resulted in a revision by the author before the article was accepted and published).
If there is not sufficient evidence of peer review on the article itself, you can try searching online for the journal's editorial policy--most journals have a "home page" with descriptive information. If it is a peer reviewed journal, its information page will often give an explanation of the peer review process. Sometimes this information appears under the "About", "Aims & Scope", or "Instructions for Authors" (or similarly titled) sections. You can usually find a journal's home page with a Google search of the journal title together with the word "journal".
Example: In this case, the journal title is "Plos One":
Example: "Plos One" journal homepage "About" and "Journal Information" sections:
Example: Publisher's peer review statement for Plos One journal.
The statement of a peer review process is evidence that you have found a peer reviewed journal. Therefore, any scientific research articles published in such a journal will have been peer reviewed.
Primary sources
You may heave heard about primary and secondary sources in courses you have taken in other disciplines. In the sciences, primary sources are documents in which the authors (researchers) describe and explain their own original research. For example, a primary source would be a journal article in which scientists report on their study of salmon-derived nitrogen found in tree rings.
Primary source scientific research articles share a similar basic structure, usually including the following sections (in addition to a reference list):
(Drexel University Libraries, 2021: https://libguides.library.drexel.edu/biomed-literature-types)
For more information on how to identify primary source scientific research articles, see this video tutorial from Steenbock Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison:
Secondary sources
Secondary sources are documents that analyze, interpret, or comment on primary sources: therefore, secondary sources do not present their own original research. For example, a secondary source would be an article commenting on the research article on salmon-derived nitrogen in tree rings mentioned in the paragraph above.
A review article (or literature review) is a secondary source which analyzes, interprets, or comments on primary research sources to get an overview of published research in a field.
For more information on how to identify secondary source scientific articles (especially review articles), see this video tutorial from Scottsdale Community College Library:
