- Borrowing
Scientific articles published in scholarly journals are highly focussed and written by scholars for other scholars and experts in the field. They either report on primary research done by the scientists themselves, or provide a review and evaluation of the research in a given area (systematic review or meta-analysis).
Below are the research databases we recommend for starting your scientific article search.
Remember: It's good research strategy to do your searches in MORE THAN ONE database.
To browse the more than 200 databases the library subscribes to, please visit our Research database page.
Covers all aspects of the human impact on the environment, including global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
Current scholarly articles from many areas of science and ebooks published from 2017-2021.
A library database provides access to the contents of thousands of scholarly journals, sometimes covering a particular discipline or sometimes multi-disciplinary in scope, meaning they may cover many subject areas.
Better than a Google search, databases come with tools that help you refine your search to get more relevant results, as well as links to related articles. In most cases, you can be confident that the articles you find will be credible sources to incorporate into your writing.
Here is an introduction to searching Academic Search Complete, one of the library's largest, multi-disciplinary databases. Although the interface is somewhat different than the "Best bets" listed on the tab to the left, the method of searching and the tools will be similar.
Key features of most databases:
Google Scholar is a search engine that covers much of the scholarly, peer reviewed literature from academic publishers, plus conferences, theses and dissertations, abstracts and more. Some of the content is available full text, and some will be citation-only.
You can configure your settings to include links to articles available from Kwantlen Polytechnic Library subscription journals to avoid hitting publishers' paywalls. See the screenshot below.
Want a quick introduction to searching Google Scholar, including Advanced Search? Thanks to the University of Alabama Libraries for this video.
Don't forget about Open Access journals. These are scholarly, peer reviewed journals available for free (they do not require a KPU login).
For more information about Open Access journals, please visit the Open Access Publishing page on our Research, Scholarship, and Publishing at KPU guide.
Here are some of the important Open Access journal collections for Biology. Use the links below, or simply do a Google search for them. Keep these in mind for when you are no longer affiliated with KPU, but want access to quality, scientific literature.
For your work in Environmental Protection Technology, the Library subscribes to a number of trade and professional publications, both in print and online. These publications are intended for people working in the field, who require evidence-based information written in a summarized way with a practical, applied focus. Content usually includes: advertisements for specialized equipment and services; brief research highlights; columns and opinion pieces, as well as news about trade conferences and other events.
Check for yourself. Click the arrows to answer each of the 3 questions below. Maximize + to view each image.
This kind of research article is among the most reliable sources of information you can find. And the most rigorous among these are systematic reviews and meta-analyses which comprehensively review and summarize all past articles published on a particular area of research.
Peer-reviewed articles are also how researchers communicate their findings, and verify, disprove, or build upon the research of others.
This video will give you a quick introduction to the peer-reviewed process.
In a database you can often filter results to "peer reviewed" or "scholarly", but maybe the search tool you are using doesn't have that option; or maybe Google Scholar is telling you it is scholarly, but you aren't sure...
The following KPU Library video explains the purpose and features of a scholarly journal article.
The quickest way to see if the library has access to an article is to copy and paste the full title into Summon search.
1. Put the title in quotations marks so that it will be searched as a complete phrase, rather than all of the words separately. Run the search.
2. Next, select Scholarly and Peer-Review articles from the content filter on the left hand side of the results. This is to ensure you are just getting the article itself, and not something about the article.
3. The article you are looking for should be at the top of the results list because Summon will put the most relevant articles at the top.
4. Double check using the authors' names: are the authors of your article the same as the ones listed?
Need a journal that isn't in our collection? If you are looking for a particular article in that journal, you can place an interlibrary loan. The Library can usually email it to you within a few days.
