Academic Journals
Click here to begin searching EBSO Discovery to find your perfect academic journal article!
Remember: You want to find an article that is going to best fit your topic. And hopefully, your topic is on something you're interested in. Academic journals aren't for the faint of heart--they're serious stuff with some really intense wordage, data, and concepts. You might have to read this article over and over and over again! So make sure it's something you're interested in! And also make sure that it fits your assignment--do you need data from a study, or is it more of a critique or analysis or a topic?
Reading an academic journal:
Yup. They're dense. Tough stuff. I warned you! But don't worry. They're not that bad. Here's a video and Dixon's three steps to reading academic journals.
1. Start with the Abstract and Introduction. One of the beauties of these publications is they are very formulaic. They all have the same basic structure. And step one is always the abstract and/or intro. Read these sections first. They'll help you decide if the article will be helpful or not. Sometimes it won't be, so why waste your time trying to read the whole thing. Start here to see. No need to commit if you don't have to.
2. Jump to the conclusion. What? Jump to the end? That'll spoil the fun! Sure, if you're reading a Stephen King novel, but this isn't really meant to be suspenseful. Some scholarly articles even give away the conclusion within the abstract or intro. So go ahead. Read the conclusion. That will help you determine if you want to commit or not.
3. Slowly read the article again and again, taking copious notes. Remember those "active reading" lessons all your English and history teachers have taught you? They taught you that for a reason. Read the article once over to get an idea of it all. Then read it again taking notes. Lots and lots of notes. You can print it and scribble all over it with your red pen and yellow highlighter. Or use the online tools to take notes right on the computer. Fancy stuff, huh? Then read it all over again for further comprehension. You may need to do this again and again and again. It's like watching a movie: You watch it once and loved it; you watched it a second time and starting noticing all these subtle things, like foreshadowing; then you watch it a third time and you realize there's all this symbolism going on in it. The film has grown deeper with every viewing; the article will make more sense the more read it.
4. Ask question. You're in high school. Not college. We know that. We're here to help you with questions. So ask them! This is to get you ready for college where you will send a lot of time with these articles. If you get stumped, ask and learn!
What is an Academic Journal?
Often called "Academic Journals" or "Scholarly Journals," these too are published like magazines, though not all of them are as glossy and shiny as your typical magazine. Even though Outdoor Photographer has a specific audience, journals have even narrower audiences. They're for experts in a certain field. Let's say you're a potato farmer, and you want to keep up on the latest and greatest information on potatoes. You'd want to subscribe to The American Journal of Potato Research. Yup. It's a thing. Maybe you need Flavor and Fragrance Journal because you work with flavors and fragrances. How about Waste Management for, you know, people that work in that line. They've got to stay on top of contemporary research so they don't end up neck deep in... Um... Well, now you know about academic journals!
Also, you'll notice that academic journal focus mostly on new research. It's the most up-to-date with what's going in a field. So you'll see a lot of studies. A lot of data. Many of the "popular magazines" will essentially be condensations and summations of one or several research studies found in academic journals. When you see something in a newspaper or magazine that says, "According to studies..." you now know where these journalists got their information. And you can go straight to the original source--the academic journal. That's a much better resource!
Most academic journals will use Peer Review to make sure that the articles are authentic and high quality. The publication will share the article with selected members of the field--other experts-- who will verify the awesomeness of the study and article. This creates a series of checks and balances to ensure quality. In EBSCO Discovery, there is a check box that will limit searches to only articles that have been peer reviewed.