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Determining the value of an article

Journal databases index a huge variety of journals. Many of the journals are academic or scholarly publications but there are also many more journals that are not authoritative and have been produced by non-experts. It can be difficult to determine the value of an article but there are a couple of pointers to look out for.

• Has the article been peer reviewed or refereed?
• Has the article been cited by other articles?

Peer reviewed or refereed journals

Many academic or scholarly journals have a board of editors who are experts in their field. These editors evaluate articles that are submitted for publication to the journal. The articles that pass the evaluation process are published and are then referred to as being peer reviewed or refereed. Peer reviewed articles are generally considered to be authoritative and of a high standard.

Some journal databases will allow you to limit your search to peer reviewed articles (your search will only return articles that have undergone the peer reviewed/refereed process). For more information see http://www.une.edu.au/library/eskillsplus/research/secondary.php

EBSCOhost and Gale databases

Both the EBSCOhost and Gale databases will allow you to limit to peer reviewed articles from their basic search screens.

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Note
Some databases only index journals that have been peer-reviewed and therefore do not provide an option to limit is this way.

The Thomas Reuters Web of Science is an example of a peer-reviewed only journal database.

Ulrich's Periodicals Directory

Ulrich's Periodicals Directory indexes almost all journals that have been published. You can limit your search to refereed journals using their advanced search screen.

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Citation indexes

You will locate a number of articles that are key to your research and it can be useful to research these articles to see if other researchers have cited them. A Citation Index lists where and when a work has been cited. Generally speaking, the more a work has been cited the more authoritative it is (however, this is not always the case and it is a good idea to look out for authors who cite themselves a lot). This information can also be useful to determine the linkages between authors and to investigate the development of an idea or theory (Hart, 2001, p.161). The CDU Library subscribes to two electronic databases that also include citation indexes or citation searching.

Note
It is important to note that the databases listed below (Web of Science and EBSCOhost databases) index different subject areas and different journals so you will get different results in each.

Web of Science

The Web of Science database provides electronic access to Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index from 1992 onwards. To search for other articles that have cited your key article, select Cited reference search.

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Step 1: Select

• In the Cited Author field type in the author's details name (surname first) e.g. currie b*
• In the Cited Work field enter the abbreviated journal title. If you don't know the abbreviation use the list as a guide
• In the Cited Year field type in the year the Cited Work was published
• Select Lookup

Note: All fields do not need to be completed

Step 2: Cited reference selection

• The table lists the cited references that match the search request and the number of times each has been cited
• Select the required references (including variants) 
• Click on Search

EBSCOhost databases (Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier and PsycINFO )

Selected EBSCOhost databases will also allow you to search for who has cited your key article or author. Select References from the options bar.

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Once you have selected References from the options bar you can then search for articles that have been previously cited by:

• In the Author field type in the author's name (surname first)
• In the Source field type the journal title
• In the Title field type the article title
• In the Year field type in the year of publication
• In the All field type in your keywords

(All fields do not need to be completed )

Search Tip
It can be difficult to determine whether a journal article has been refereed or cited by other articles. Your Liaison Librarian can help you to improve your search and assist with evaluating the quality of the articles you find.

Contact your Liaison Librarian for assistance.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar searches a range of scholarly and other literature, including journal articles, conference papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports. It provides citation counts under the "cited by" link; generally results are higher than in Web of Science because of the range of material covered, but there is duplication at times. For more information see Citation Counts and Journal Rankings.

RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary) is a way of channelling web content without having to visit each web page regularly. RSS readers such as Google Reader and Bloglines allow you to display the content from pages of interest.

For more information see Citation Tracking.

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