I often mention my sources of information when I discuss a particular topic. Often, they will be research articles or review articles.
Basically, these are articles written by researchers that are published in peer-reviewed (experts read them over to make sure the live up to certain standards) scientific journals (collections of research papers on a particular topic).
For those who don’t know what the heck I am talking about, read on:
I found the following great summaries on the University of Texas Libraries website.
Research Articles:
When scientists and other scholars want to make the results of their work public, they usually begin by publishing them in a scholarly journal with a title like New England Journal of Medicine, or Journal of Cell Biology.
- http://www.lib.utexas.edu/lsl/help/modules/research.html
Review Articles:
Review articles are an attempt by one or more writers to sum up the current state of the research on a particular topic. Ideally, the writer searches for everything relevant to the topic, and then sorts it all out into a coherent view of the “state of the art” as it now stands.
- http://www.lib.utexas.edu/lsl/help/modules/review.html
I love finding review articles when I want to learn about something new I am interested in. One I am reading right now is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18394711. For those of you trying to download (I don’t know why you would want to) you need a subscription to the journal containing this article.
There’s no way I could afford subscriptions to all the journals I reference on this site, but since I am doing a Masters Degree right now, I have access to the Universities’ subscriptions. Which makes this a good time to be writing for this website!
Anyway, just wanted to clear up some confusion on where my information is coming from.
Peace.
