Search for academic articles Search for publications from a professional organization, use databases such as JSTOR that contain only academic sources, use databases such as Academic Search Complete or other EBSCO databases that allow you to choose peer-reviewed journals. Determining which sources are reliable can be a challenge. Peer-reviewed academic journal articles are the gold standard in academic research. Accredited academic journals have a rigorous peer-review process.
In Gale Academic OneFile, you can limit your search to academic journals (peer-reviewed) from the advanced search page. Subscription fees and barriers to payment are often a nightmare for students and academics, especially those from small institutions that don't offer access to many directories and repositories of free articles. EconBiz has an incredibly useful research skills section, with resources such as Guided Walk, a service that helps students and researchers search, evaluate sources and correctly cite references; the EconDesk research guide, a help desk to answer specific questions and provide tips to help search for literature; and the academic career kit for what they call early-career researchers. You can search for a specific publisher to see if they have OA publications in the academic journal database.
Browsing OA journals, databases of research articles, and academic websites trying to find high-quality sources for your research can really make you dizzy. There are OA journals that have academic content that is not peer-reviewed, as well as journals that focus on dissertations, theses, and conference articles, but the main focus of OA is on peer-reviewed academic journal articles. The peer review process provides legitimacy, since it is a rigorous review of the content of an article by academics and academics experts in their field of study. Peer-reviewed journal articles are the best for academic research, and there are several databases where you can find peer-reviewed OA journal articles.
Each discipline will have standard terminology or jargon that other academics in the discipline can use and understand. In academic searches, just like in a search engine, you can use keywords to browse what's available and find exactly what you're looking for. The peer review process provides accountability to the academic community, as well as to the content of the article. This means that the author is trying to reach experts, researchers, academics and students in the field or topic on which the research is based.
Undoubtedly, the Internet has facilitated access to research articles and other academic publications without the need to access a university library, and OA goes one step further in that direction by eliminating financial barriers to academic content. Use the appropriate academic journal database for your search, whether it is interdisciplinary or specific to your field.
