BI233 Instructional Session
What are we talking about today?
- What we mean when we say peer review.
- What we mean when we say primary research.
- How to search for peer-reviewed, primary research articles.
- And then we'll actually search!
Let's talk about peer review.
You're being asked to find an article in a peer reviewed journal, but what does that mean?
Working with a peer, discuss how you define peer review, what characteristics do you look for to determine if something is peer reviewed, and where you would go to search for peer-reviewed articles? Would you expect to find peer-reviewed articles in a newspaper or magazine? Why or why not? Have you been asked to find peer-reviewed articles before? Why do you think instructors recommend you include peer-reviewed articles for academic research? How often do you think peer-reviewed articles get rejected from publication?
Now let's shared what you talked about with the rest of the class!
Would you consider something like this peer reviewed?
Working with a peer, discuss how you define peer review, what characteristics do you look for to determine if something is peer reviewed, and where you would go to search for peer-reviewed articles? Would you expect to find peer-reviewed articles in a newspaper or magazine? Why or why not? Have you been asked to find peer-reviewed articles before? Why do you think instructors recommend you include peer-reviewed articles for academic research? How often do you think peer-reviewed articles get rejected from publication?
Now let's shared what you talked about with the rest of the class!
Would you consider something like this peer reviewed?
Let's talk about primary research.
So now that we've got peer review down pat, our next task is to find a primary research article. What does that mean? Where are you looking for primary research, peer-reviewed articles?
Let's get to some definitions! A primary research article reports on an experimental research study conducted by the authors. It is almost always published in a peer-reviewed journal. This type of article:
Let's get some practice identifying primary research in the wild! Sometimes (but not always!), you can tell if an article is primary research by reading the abstract. Using the following abstracts (and what you know about what to look for in a primary research article) determine which ones are primary and which ones are not:
Let's get to some definitions! A primary research article reports on an experimental research study conducted by the authors. It is almost always published in a peer-reviewed journal. This type of article:
- Asks a research question or states a hypothesis or hypotheses
- Identifies a research population (who they're conducting the study on)
- Describes a specific research method
- Tests or measures something (usually provides access to the data that was measured)
- Includes a section called "method" or "methodology"
- Includes a section called "results"
- Words to look for as clues include: the author/authors, analysis, study, investigation, examination, experiment, numbers of people or objects analyzed, content analysis, or surveys
Let's get some practice identifying primary research in the wild! Sometimes (but not always!), you can tell if an article is primary research by reading the abstract. Using the following abstracts (and what you know about what to look for in a primary research article) determine which ones are primary and which ones are not:
Let's talk about how to search on the library website.
There's a lot of information on the library homepage. What's the first thing you notice on this page?
When you forget where to go, just look for resources that are for students (because that's what you are!) When I look for the Students header, I can see the first link is for Resources, and that's what I want!
For this assignment, you're searching for peer-reviewed articles related to biology. From the Resources link, the first link I see is Resources by Subject, and since I want articles on the subject of biology that's where I click! Scrolling down to Sciences, I see a few options, but the first one is Biology I click there and from that page I see a menu of different source types. I'm looking for articles, and so from that page, I see several databases that will give me the type of information useful for this assignment.
Now that we've selected a database, how do we search for what we want?
For this assignment, you're searching for peer-reviewed articles related to biology. From the Resources link, the first link I see is Resources by Subject, and since I want articles on the subject of biology that's where I click! Scrolling down to Sciences, I see a few options, but the first one is Biology I click there and from that page I see a menu of different source types. I'm looking for articles, and so from that page, I see several databases that will give me the type of information useful for this assignment.
Now that we've selected a database, how do we search for what we want?
Searching in a library database is different than how you search in Google. You want to search only the most important words--I call it Hulkspeak, but you can call it whatever you want! The good news is, you already know how to search in a database if you've used a database like Netflix or Hulu before!
If I type in "I want to watch cooking shows" into Hulu, I get a bunch of stuff--but none of it is relevant to what I want to watch!
If I type in "I want to watch cooking shows" into Hulu, I get a bunch of stuff--but none of it is relevant to what I want to watch!
But if I just type in the most important word, "cooking," I get stuff that's a lot more relevant to what I want to watch!
Once you've got the best keywords, you can filter out the stuff that isn't peer reviewed and you can filter the date range, so you're only finding quality stuff relevant to this assignment!
You might also find that some sources only have a summary (or an abstract) and you can't immediately read the full text! Fear not! There is a way to request these sources that's entirely free and usually only takes about 24 hours for delivery. Click here for instructions on how to request items.
You might also find that some sources only have a summary (or an abstract) and you can't immediately read the full text! Fear not! There is a way to request these sources that's entirely free and usually only takes about 24 hours for delivery. Click here for instructions on how to request items.
Let's start searching!
When you search, you might find yourself getting stumped. That's totally normal, there's a lot to this whole research thing! To help you, the library offers a wide range of services. We'll help even if you're not using library resources, you just have to ask!