Peer-reviewed Sources - ITC3042T/ITC3228D/ITC321PC - Professional Language Skills and Project Preparation - Guides & Tutorials at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

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Scholarly Sources

Now you have developed some understanding of your topic and have formulated your research question. It's time to find more scholarly materials to develop and support your arguments in the essay.

Scholarly sources help you develop an academic argument for your research. Scholarly journals and books are two major scholarly sources you will need for your research work. Also, you have probably heard from your instructor that you would need to read peer-reviewed journal articles. So what are peer-reviewed journal articles and where to find them?

You will learn the followings:

Scholarly sources help you develop an academic argument for your research. Books and scholarly journals are two major scholarly sources you will need for your research work. You have probably heard from your instructor or supervisor that you would need to read peer-reviewed works. So what does peer review mean and how do we check if a work is peer-reviewed?

What is Peer Review?

Peer review is a quality control process before a scholarly work is published. Watch this short video to learn what peer review is.

Source: NC State University Libraries (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

Find Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

What are Journal Articles?

What are Peer-reviewed Journals?

Present the findings of a study, research or experiment
Provides in-depth analysis of ONE specialized topic
Written by scholars or experts in the discipline

Peer-reviewed or refereed journals have an editorial board of subject experts who review and evaluate submitted articles before accepting them for publication.
A journal may be a scholarly journal but not a peer-reviewed journal.
Scholarly journals use this process to protect and maintain the quality of the material they publish. See an example from a journal publisher: WILEY's Peer Review Process

This is what a typical journal article looks like. The key components are highlighted.

Where to Find Journal Articles?

Library subscribes to a huge number of scholarly journals in different disciplines. You can use OneSearch, the Library's search engine, to find the articles in these journals based on the topic you have.

Watch this video to learn how this works.

How to find high impact peer-reviewed works?

For students who wish to read top journals in your research field. There are a couple of tools to help you identify the top journals according to certain citation metrics.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
ranks journals covered in Web of Science SCIE and SSCI based on Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and a few other metrics. Check out this guide to know how to find top journals in your field based on JIF.
Scopus > Sources
ranks journals covered in Scopus based on CiteScore, SNIP and SJR. Check out this guide to know how to find top journals in your field based on these metrics.

Where to Find Books?

Library subscribes to a huge number of scholarly books in different disciplines. The quickest way to find books is through a direct search in OneSearch. You may search by Keywords, Title of the Book based on the topic you have.

Watch this video to learn how this works.

Some quick steps:

Visit Library homepage, click on the embedded search box, or directly visit OneSearch.
Type in your keywords or title of the book and hit the search button.
Limit results to "Books" under Resource Type on the right panel of the page. You may further refine results to "Physical items" (which means print books only), or "Full Text Online" (which means e-books only).
Click on the book title to see more information about the book.
For print books, the location is described by its Call Number. You will need to find the book from the bookshelf and check it out at Service Counter at P/F (see below for How to Read Call Numbers). For e-books, sign in with your NetID and NetPassword to get access to the full-text of the book.