Scholarly Sources

This video defines scholarly articles and explains how you might be asked to use them in future research projects.

When assigned a research project, your instructor probably has stipulated that you use scholarly or peer-reviewed sources. But what is the difference between scholarly and non-scholarly sources? Put simply, scholarly sources are written by experts in the field and are ‘peer-reviewed’ which means fellow academics have reviewed the article and deemed it to meet the standards of excellence of the field and contribute to the academic conversations of the field. Scholarly sources also have bibliographies or worked cited pages for you to use and are usually fairly long—between 15 and 40 pages. There are a number of ways to find scholarly sources: you can try limiting your search by checking the “scholarly sources box” on some databases; you can also do so after a general search by clicking “Peer-reviewed journals” under the Show Only limiter on the side of the page; or you can look for articles that are tagged as peer-reviewed. If you have any further questions, click the Ask A Librarian button on the homepage for help.