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Anthropology

Scholarly & Peer Reviewed Articles

graphic showing the continuum of resources from popular to scholarly - from popular magazines to trade journals to conference proceedings to scholarly journals to peer-reviewed scholarly journals

You will be using scholarly and peer-reviewed articles.

  • Scholarly (aka academic) articles are written by and for scholars and researchers - this means you!
  • Peer reviewed (aka refereed) articles have been checked by other scholars BEFORE they're published.

Most databases will tell you if it's an article from a peer reviewed journal - see Publication Type near bottom of article information.

Article Purposes

Different types of articles are written for different reasons!

  • Original research or experimentation: shows original research using EMPIRICAL evidence, data collected by the article's authors themselves or by others (for example, US Census data) (Example)
  • Reviews of literature on the topic: uses SYNTHESIZED evidence to create a critical survey and analysis of what is currently published on a specific topic - includes narrative literature reviews, systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-synthesis (Example)
  • Articles that create or explore a theory, framework, or model of thinking: use INFORMATION about other theories or frameworks to describe development of a theoretical approach, compare theories, or discuss issues surrounding a theory (Example)
  • Opinions/perspective articles: these comment on a topic and require no original research. They may appear as an article in a column, editorial, letter to the editor, etc. (Example)

Evaluating Sources