How to Find Peer-Reviewed Articles
Databases, search strategy and the filters that separate scholarship from noise.
Research & Writing • 6 min read
Start in the library, not the search engine
Your tuition already bought access to databases most of the internet cannot see: JSTOR, ProQuest, EBSCO, PubMed, Scopus, IEEE Xplore. Log in through the library portal so your access is authenticated, then filter to peer-reviewed or scholarly journals.
General web search is useful for orienting yourself in a topic, and useless as a source list.
Search like a researcher
Break your question into concepts, list synonyms for each, and combine them with AND between concepts and OR within them. Use quotation marks for phrases and an asterisk for word stems, so educat* returns education, educator and educational.
Limit by date when currency matters, and by methodology when it does not. Read the abstract, then the method, then the conclusion — in that order.
Mine what you find
Every good article contains two more search tools: its reference list points backward to foundational work, and a cited-by search points forward to newer studies. Two or three rounds of this produces a literature base faster than any keyword search.
Save everything to a citation manager as you go. Rebuilding references at 2 a.m. is the most avoidable pain in graduate school.
Want the tools that go with this?
Calculators, planners and trackers built for every stage of the journey.