Defining Scholarly Sources
Scholarly sources are written by experts on that topic and are typically academic books or articles published in peer-reviewed journals.
Someone is considered an expert if they have credentials in that field of knowledge. Credentials include:
- An advanced education/degree, such as a Masters or Doctorates (PhD), in the subject area of that field.
- Work experience in that field, such as a professor at a university teaching that subject, a researcher working for an organization or a government agency in that field, or any career where they work with that subject knowledge every day and would be an expert on it.
- Being an author of additional publications (books or articles in journals) related to your topic or that field of knowledge.
Peer-reviewed journals have a review process where articles are evaluated by other experts in the field (peers--also called referees) for accuracy, credibility, and adding new information to the field of knowledge BEFORE being accepted by the editor and published in the journal.
Popular vs. Scholarly Sources
Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
What Does Peer Review Mean?
Your professor has likely required you use peer-reviewed, or scholarly, or academic journal articles for your research. But what does it mean to be peer-reviewed, and why is it so important? Watch the videos below to find out.
What Is a Scholarly Article?
You know that scholarly articles have been peer-reviewed, but how do you know whether an article is considered scholarly? What does a scholarly article look like? What are the parts of a scholarly article? Watch the videos below to find out.
Finding Empirical Sources
Your professor may have required you to find empirical sources or empirical data.
According to LiveScience, empirical data is "Information that is acquired by observation or experimentation and is used to prove or disprove a hypothesis."
Think about your experience with:
- Writing a lab report for science class using the Scientific Method, with a hypothesis, materials, methods, data collected, analysis of the data, and conclusion.
- Creating surveys and polls in a psychology class and analyzing the results.
- Learning about standard deviation, N for number of people, and outliers in statistics class.
- Drug testing by pharmaceutical companies with two groups, one getting the drug and one getting a placebo (the control group).
Empirical articles are usually found in peer-reviewed journals. Words to look for in the title or abstract include:
- Clinical report
- Study
- Survey
- Results
Empirical articles will have sections similar to writing a lab report using the Scientific Method, such as Methods, Anyalysis, and Conclusion.
