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POL 220 Law and Society: Find Scholarly Articles

What is a peer reviewed source?

What are peer reviewed articles and when are they used?

Peer reviewed articles are scholarly works, written by academics or other professionals. They are published in journals after evaluation by subject experts. Peer reviewed articles are the most reliable academic resources. When researching a topic, scholars normally read the peer reviewed research previously published on the topic for background understanding, to discover what is already known on the topic and to determine what needs further research.

Why not just search on Google (or even Google Scholar)?

Google is a commercial website. It provides access to commercial webpages and popular, free sources such as blogs, online trade magazines, organization and government websites. Since none of these sources have been subject to academic peer-review by subject experts, they are not suitable for academic research (except when initially exploring a topic).

Google Scholar does index peer-reviewed sources. It can be useful for academic research. When using Google Scholar, be sure to use lateral reading skills to avoid pseudo and predatory journals.

When using resources purchased by the library and available in library databases, you can be certain all are vetted by librarians to be reliable.

Find Scholarly Articles on Legal Topics

Librarian

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Karoline Manny
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Karoline Manny
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Danville, KY 40422
859.238.5299