Psychology & Neuroscience Resources: About Empirical & Scholarly Articles

Scholarly or peer-reviewed articles usually have the following features:

• The journals in which they appear are often published quarterly at most
• The articles are substantial (not just 2 or 3 pages)
• The author(s) are named, along with their affiliations (such as university or research institute)
• The journals in which they appear contain little or no advertising, glossy pictures or other decorative graphics. Illustrations are usually limited to charts and graphs.
• The articles include a list of references. (This is helpful, because if you find one good scholarly article, it will lead you to other potentially useful resources).
• The articles are written at a level assuming a certain level of prior knowledge. Unlike articles in newspapers or popular magazines, which are written for the general public, scholarly articles are written for an audience of scholars, practitioners or students in the discipline.

Is it peer-reviewed?

• If you find an article in a library database, often the database will identify the journal as being peer-reviewed or refereed.
• Search for the journal title in MLA Directory of Publications, which identifies important aspects of journals
• Check the journal's front or back pages, or its website, for evidence of a peer-review process. This information is often found under information for authors, submission guidelines or editorial policies.

• Empirical studies are those based on actual and objective observation or experimentation.
• Articles that describe empirical research studies are usually published in scholarly or academic journals.
• Many scholarly or academic journals are peer-reviewed or referreed, meaning that a panel of experts in the field selects and reviews the articles published in the journal. These articles are often, but not always, empirical studies.

Most databases will let you limit your search to articles that are:

• scholarly
• academic
• peer-reviewed
• referreed

Most, but not all, of these will be empirical studies.  EBSCOhost's psychology databases allow you to limit your search to Empirical Studies and Scholarly Articles.  See video at right.

To further focus your search, try adding one of the following terms to your search (try different combinations):

• study
• methodology
• empirical
• research
• findings
• results