Facts About Articles

Education home > Facts About Articles

• What Are Periodicals?
• Primary vs. Secondary Sources
• ERIC materials: EJ vs. ED
• Popular, Professional, and Scholarly Periodicals
• Refereed/Peer-Reviewed Journals
• Facts About Full-text

What Are Periodicals?

Periodicals include magazine, journal, and newspaper articles. Because most research projects require current research information in addition to background/overview material, you will probably need to find periodical articles on your topic. Periodical articles are excellent sources of concrete examples, statistics, and other research evidence for your papers and projects. Here are a few things your instructors usually expect you to know about periodical articles:

1. the difference between primary and secondary sources
2. the difference between popular, trade, and scholarly peridocials
3. what "refereed" or "peer-reviewed" journals are

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary information is produced for a specific problem or task and is usually reported by someone who is directly involved as a witness to the events. Thus if a researcher studies the relationship between self-esteem and academic achievement in a sample of female adolescents, or a teacher measures the effect of positive behavioral supports on classroom discipline, they are creating primary information.

Primary sources are usually written by the person(s) who did the research, conducted the study, ran the experiment, etc. Primary sources are detailed reports of the results from the study reported directly to the reader. In most cases, these sources report on a single study.

Look for clues in the text: explanation of hypotheses description of the population or sample in the study outline of methodology report of statistics generated from the study report of results and a discussion of their significance Reports of primary research often begin with a literature review or synthesis of the theory and other research relevant to the topic being studied. Examples of primary sources include pilot studies, term projects, survey research, case studies, and experimental research.

Here is an example from the ERIC database of a primary journal article:

Secondary literature lists, summarizes, and evaluates primary information and studies so as to draw conclusions concerning our current state of knowledge about a particular subject. Often they discuss more than one study or experiment at a time. They may include a bibliography, that can effectively lead you back to the primary research reported in the article.

Look for clues in the text: reviews of literature on a topic a synthesis of various research findings historical overviews of research on a topic

Here is an example from the ERIC database of a secondary journal article:

ERIC materials: EJ vs. ED

ERIC, which stands for Educational Resources Information Center, is the premier database for finding information on all aspects of education. You will come across two types of information in ERIC: ERIC journals and ERIC documents.

ERIC Digest Reports

These are 1,000 to 1,500 word reports on a variety of educational topics and are considered ERIC documents or ED's. They are secondary sources and usually contain an overview of the topic. The fulltext of ERIC Digest materials is included in the ERIC database.

Obtaining ERIC Documents

Many ED materials are available on microfiche. Check with academic libraries in your area to see if ERIC microfiche is available. Many ERIC documents published after 1996 (ED385695 and higher) are available online through the U.S. Department of Education ERIC website. If the item you need is not available online, you may obtain photocopies of ED materials owned by the Webster-Eden Library System (ED348466 or higher) through our Document Delivery Service.

Popular vs. Professional vs. Scholarly Periodicals

Most periodicals fall into one of three categories: popular, trade/professional, and scholarly/academic. The table below gives examples and characteristics of each, so you can determine what category your sources fall into. Each type of periodical may be appropriate, depending on the type or project you're doing. Be sure to check with your instructor to see what kinds of sources are expected.

Refereed/Peer-Reviewed Journals

Have you ever had a colleague or friend read your paper before you turned it in? You probably wanted to make sure the paper made sense, that you presented your facts correctly, and that the paper was of acceptable quality. Refereed and peer-reviewed journals work on the same principle! Often instructors will require you to use refereed or peer-reviewed sources in your papers. In many cases, refereed sources are also scholarly sources (see the table above with the characteristics of scholarly sources).

"A refereed source is one in which information is published only after it's been reviewed by several other experts in that subject area. Many scholarly journals follow this procedure...Rigorous review of published research...assures you...of acceptable and scholarly information." Carla List, Introduction to Library Research, 2nd ed., College Custom Series (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993) 83.

To see if a journal is refereed/peer-reviewed, check the online version of Ulrich's: do a title (keyword) search for the journal title and look for a refereed symbol:

Some databases allow you to limit your search results to only those published in refereed or peer-reviewed journals. This is also a good way to insure that your results are coming from scholarly sources.

Facts About Full-text

Not every article in every database is available full-text.

• Full-text offerings vary between databases, and between periodicals.
• Some publishers restrict rights to provide full-text because they feel it limits their ability to sell print copies. Further, publishers may make agreements with some database vendors but not with others.
• Databases are also selective in the full-text they reproduce: some include full-text with illustrations, charts, tables, etc., and others only include text or abstracts.
• Many databases index articles written 5, 10, even 20 years ago. These are often not available full-text and will need to be obtained from paper copies.

Available full-text is not always the equivalent to what's in the print version.

• Databases are selective about how much of the text they reproduce. Some may include the text with any illustrations, tables, charts, etc., others may not.
• Databases may not cover every periodical to the same depth. That is, every article in certain "core" periodicals may be indexed in the database, while the database may only include selected articles from other more peripheral periodicals.

Don't discount a database just because it does not have full-text articles!

• Some non-full-text databases do a better job of covering a particular subject area than more general/multidisciplinary databases.
• Since it is possible to obtain the text of articles not provided full-text online, there is no reason to avoid a database just because it offers little or no full-text.

If the database you're using does not provide the full-text, another might.

• Even if two databases cover the same periodical, they may not both supply the full-text. For example, the American Journal of Family Therapy is available full-text in Academic Search Premier but not in PsycARTICLES. If the full-text is not available in the database you're in, try searching another Library database that covers the periodical.
• Detailed information on how to do this is available in the section called what to do if the full-text is not online.

Just because the full-text is not available online does not mean you cannot obtain the article.

• It may be possible to find the full-text online in another Library database, or the library may have a subscription to the print version of the periodical. Some databases will indicate if the library subscribes to the periodical in question.
• Articles can also be obtained through the library's Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan services. For more information, please see the section called what to do if the full-text is not online.