HHS 444: The Right to Be Disabled in the Extreme Makeover Society (UNH Durham)

Makes you an informed researcher/applicant

Provides perspective by situating your work within the knowledge base (theory & practice) of your field

Supports your research idea/proposal or identifies a gap needing further research

Provides ideas for research design; for example, quantitative or qualitative approaches or instruments to use

Provides credibility to grant proposals

Scholarly (aka academic) articles are written by and for academics, researchers, and experts in the specific topic or broader subject area of the article.

Peer reviewed (aka refereed) articles are those which have been reviewed prior to publication by other experts in the topic of the article. Often reviewers are external (not members of the journal's editorial staff or board).

If you do not see the information in the database record for the article, check Ulrichsweb.

• Journals that are peer-reviewed will have a striped referee's shirt in that column.
• Not all articles in a peer-reviewed journal are peer-reviewed! Only research articles with a list of references are peer-reviewed.

Reports original research or experimentation

• Empirical: analyzes data collected by the article's authors themselves or by others (for example, US Census data)

Critically surveys and analyzes the current state of published research on a particular topic; doesn't include original research

• Includes narrative literature reviews, systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-synthesis

Describes one or more theories, frameworks, models, etc. and tends not to include empirical data 

• May describe development  of a theoretical approach, compare theories, or discuss issues surrounding a theory