Guides: Languages & Linguistics: Databases & Journals

Find Peer-Reviewed Articles

Also known as scholarly articles, peer-reviewed articles are sources that are:

written by experts in the field
reviewed by other experts in the field (hence the peer-reviewed)
intended for an academic audience

Databases contain a feature where you can narrow your results to only peer-reviewed articles.

Find Language Learning Tools:

Spanish Literature Journals
Explore Spanish Literature journals available through Jenks Library using Browzine.
French Literature Journals

Find Linguistics Sources:

BrowZine- Linguistics Journals
Use Browzine to browse linguistics journals available online through the Jenks Library.

Communication & Mass Media Complete
Supports quality research in areas related to communication and mass media. This includes both CommSearch and Mass Media Articles Index, along with journals in communication, mass media, and closely-related fields of study. Contains indexing and abstracting for more than 570 journals and full text access to over 450 journals.
SocINDEX with Full Text
A comprehensive sociology research database that contains full text for more than 630 journals and magazines, as well as books, monographs, and conference papers. Covers various areas of study including gender studies, criminal justice, social psychology, racial studies, religion and social work.

Find Articles in Multidisciplinary Databases:

Academic Search Ultimate
Academic Search Ultimate is our largest multidisciplinary database of academic journals, magazines, periodicals, reports, books and videos.
Academic OneFile
Provides millions of articles from over 17,000 scholarly journals and other authoritative sources—including thousands of podcasts and transcripts from NPR and CNN as well as videos from BBC Worldwide Learning.
JSTOR
A collection of core scholarly journals, many going back to the first volume. Emphasis is on back issue coverage. JSTOR also has an extensive collection of primary sources.

Forming your Search String

The more complicated your question, the less likely a search engine can understand it. To get the best result, identify keywords and like terms to create a search string.

Example research question: How does video gaming impact interpersonal relationships in teenagers?

Search strings connect your keywords and like terms together for the best results.

Too many results? Use AND and more keywords to narrow results

video gaming AND interpersonal relationships AND teenagers

Too few results? Use OR and like terms to broaden results

video gaming OR Xbox AND interpersonal relationships OR friendship AND teenagers OR adolescent

The authors of the article conducted their own original research.	The authors synthesize and analyze known research on a particular topic to discover trends.
Has a specific structure: introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references	Its structure can be changed depending on the topic studied.
Uses first and second person like "We discovered" or "I found" Refers primarily to "this study" (singular)	Uses third person like "they discovered" or "Choi and Wilson concluded" Refers to multiple studies
Its goal is to add a new contribution to scientific research.	Its goal is to summarize current research, draw connections, and show gaps needing further research.