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NUTR101 (Nutrition) :: Cates-Carney

Objective.
The objective of this assignment is to find a peer-reviewed journal article showing the application of a nutrient to a human health concern, and write a summary of the article. You will learn about strategies and resources for identifying and locating these articles, as well as finding relevant background information to help you understand them.

Background Information.
Before you start finding articles, it's a good idea to orient yourself by getting background information on your topic. For example, if my topic is on Vitamin D and osteoporosis, I may want to get information on Vitamin D. Getting this basic information will help you understand many terms that may be referenced (but not explained) in a peer-reviewed article. In addition, they can help you identify important keywords or search terms to enter when searching for articles in the library's periodical databases. The following resources are excellent sources of background information:
  • Access Science is an online science encyclopedia. It contains detailed reference articles on all fundamental areas of science, and often includes illustrations and animations. In addition, many reference articles contain a bibliography that lists books and peer-reviewed articles. The print version is available as the McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology ( Q121 .M3 2007). Salem Health is another online encyclopedia with a focus on health.

  • The Gale Virtual Reference Library contains reference articles from a variety of subject-specific encyclopedias, including the Encyclopedia of Human Nutrition, Encyclopedia of Alternative Health, and The Encyclopedia of Diets. 
Finding Articles.
Once you've found some relevant reference articles and have identified important keywords, you can begin your search in the library's periodical databases. You can access these at the library's periodicals databases page.  The library has two main databases:
  • EBSCO's Academic Search Complete contains millions of articles from thousands of periodicals, including academic, peer-reviewed journals. Tips for finding scholarly articles in EBSCO can be found here. 
  • ProQuest's Research Library also contains millions of articles from thousands of periodicals, but the emphasis is on newspapers rather than academic journals. Still, it is worth using. Tips for finding scholarly journals in ProQuest can be found here. 
  • The Health & Wellness Resource Center and PubMed are periodical databases that specifically deal with health and medicine. PubMed Central is the full-text portion of PubMed.
  • PLoS Biology is an open-access portal for peer-reviewed journals in biology through the Public Library of Science. These are freely available on the web.
In my example, I would conduct a search on Vitamin D and osteoporosis as two distinct search terms. Alternately, you may have found an article in a bibliography of another source. You could do a title search if you are looking for a specific article.

How to read a peer-reviewed journal article.
Once you've located an article, now it's time to read it. Because scientific articles are often complicated and contain technical jargon and complex data in the form of charts, graphs and tables, they can be intimidating or even nearly impossible to understand. This webpage on How to Read a Scientific Paper from the University of Arizona does an excellent job of breaking down the sections of a scientific article.