Q. I used the database limit option to retrieve scholarly articles. I am told what I selected are not acceptable for my research paper. Why?
Answer
Retrieving scholarly articles from databases requires a 2-step process.
Say you want to buy a car. You go to selected dealers who have the cars you like. Upon going there, you don't just drive away with any car: you spend time checking to see if the car has all the features you need. So, buying a car is a 2-step process. Retrieving quality articles is not very different from this process.
- First step is to use the limit options in order to filter your results to quality resources.
- Second Step is to check if the contents meet the "quality" criteria:
- long article with structured sections
- abstract as well as results
- in-text citations shown appropriately
- contains a bibliography
- contains statistical data, and/or graphs and charts
- shows author affiliation and contact information
- no images or photographs, except when relevant to the study
- indicates the number of times the article has been cited (used) by other scholars
NOTE: Book reviews, letters to the editor, editorials and similar articles are NOT acceptable materials for academic research papers, even when obtained from scholarly/peer-reviewed publications.
This is a link to a useful visual of a scholarly article.