Library: Nursing Information Literacy Program: Peer Reviewed Material

Why use the library databases?

What is the difference between a magazine and a peer reviewed journal?

Magazines are written for the general public. They often have a lot of advertisements in them.

Journals, on the other hand, are targeted to students or professionals working in a particular field. The usually have very few ads in them. The articles usually include bibliographies at at the end and the author's or authors' credentials (where they went to college and where they work) are given.

Sometimes a journal is peer-reviewed which means that all of the articles have been read and approved for publication by experts in the field.

Peer reviewed materials are excellent sources of information for scholarly papers!

Scholarly journal, trade magazine, or popular magazine?

	SCHOLARLY JOURNALS	TRADE MAGAZINES	POPULAR MAGAZINES
Appearance	plain cover plain paper black/white graphics & illustrations, many charts & graphs pages consecutive throughout each volume	cover depicts industrial setting glossy paper pictures & illustrations in color each issue starts with page 1	eye-catching cover glossy paper pictures & illustrations in color each issue starts with page 1
Audience	students studying in a particular field, researchers, or professionals	members of a specific business, industry, or organization	nonprofessionals
Content	research projects, methodology, & theory articles written by contributing authors	industry trends, new products or techniques, & organizational news articles written by staff or contributing authors	personalities, news, & general interest articles articles written by staff, may be unsigned
Accountability	peer reviewed/refereed bibliographies included	editorial review may have short bibliographies	editorial review no bibliographies
Advertisements	very few or no ads	all or most of the ads are trade related	many ads throughout
Examples	Critical Care Nurse Current Psychology Journal of Small Business Management Literature-Film Quarterly	Business Marketing Dairy Farmer Hospital Law Newsletter Nursing Times	Ladies Home Journal New York Psychology Today Sports Illustrated Time

Understanding the peer reviewed process

The chart above is from the article cited below. (Reading the article is not required!)

Library databases

Library Databases

Finding articles from peer reviewed journals and other sources is most efficiently accomplished by using the library databases.

The library databases:

Tell you where the information came from: a book, magazine, journal, newspaper, or video, for example.
Tell you the original date of publication/production. This information is called the citation. Be sure to write down or copy and paste all of the information listed below whenever you read, save, or print an article so that you will have it available for your Works Cited page.

More information about APA citation style format can be found at the APA Citation Style library research guide.

Why use the library databases instead of Google to find research materials for your papers or projects?

To save time finding full text scholarly sources of information!

The SC4 library subscribes to over 200 databases. The full list is available. You can search the databases individually or search them all at once by using the OneSearch box found on the library homepage. We will discuss using the OneSearch box later in this program. Sometimes, it is easiest to use a subject specific database to find information. The SC4 library subscribes to a number of excellent nursing and health science databases which will be described in the next section.