Skip to Main Content

How to find and Use Primary & Peer Review Materials

How to Find Peer Reviewed Primary Research

In a nutshell, what does peer-reviewed research mean?

"A peer-reviewed publication is also sometimes referred to as a scholarly publication. The peer-review process subjects an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field (peers) and is considered necessary to ensure academic scientific quality." - United States Geological Survey

These two tutorials will help you understand what qualifies as Peer-reviewed: 

In a nutshell, how do you find peer reviewed material?

  • Go to the Renfro Library Article Finder. Go to library.mhu.edu and click on the Search for Journal Articles tab. Limit your results to Peer-reviewed results on the left from the check box menu.
  • Google Scholar is also a great resource. Go to https://scholar.google.com/.

Photo Credit: Calvinius, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Digging a little Deeper?

You will start by generating a research question and a key word list. You can find tutorials for those 2 steps here: Developing a Research Question and Generating and Using Keywords. 

  • Next, go to the Renfro Library Article finder. Go to library.mhu.edu and click on the Search for Journal Articles tab.
  • Limit your results to Peer-reviewed results on the left from the check box menu.

These two Renfro Library tutorials will help you refine your search and get relevant results: Constructing a Data Base Search Query and Accessing ProQuest Research Companion.

Google Scholar is also a great resource. Go to https://scholar.google.com/ .

  • First establish Your Libraries in the drop menu under Settings on the left of the home screen.
  • In the Your Library search bar, search for and check Mars Hill University (and any other libraries where you have sign in credentials).
  • Now your results which are available through Renfro Library will have a clickable link on the right of the reference, to get you straight to the article from the Google Scholar Page.
  • The links under each result are VERY USEFUL! The Save function stores the citation in My Library (top right on the results page). The Cite function generates copyable citations. The Cited by lets you know how many other scholars have cited this work and links directly to those citations. The Related articles links to other works with similar key words. This YouTube tutorial does a great job explaining the functions and tricks of GoogleScholar.

*Most results generated through Google Scholar are peer-reviewed, but you still need to check each article to confirm whether or not it is peer-reviewed

Here is a list of Renfro Library Research Tutorials.

 

 

Renfro Library Staff Help you Understand what "Peer Reviewed" Means

Renfro Library Staff Help you use the Proquest Research Companion

YouTube Content Creator Chelsea give tips for Google Scholar