- Borrowing
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...
Click the blue circles in the screenshot below to see the various features of a peer reviewed, scholarly article.
Or see the library's FAQ on what to look for when identifying these kinds of articles.
Finding articles that cite each other is sometimes called "citation chaining" or "citation tracking" and is a good strategy for finding out what researchers are saying about a topic. Once you have found an article that is relevant to your research, there are several tools that will help you find additional ones.
Search Google Scholar for your article. Below the article, you will see a link to Cited by and the number of times the article has been cited by others. In other words, this feature pulls together all of the articles that make reference to your article, giving you an idea of how other researchers have used this publication. Clicking the link will take you to all of those sources.
The number of times an article has been cited by others MAY be an indication of its impact on a topic, but realize that for very recent articles, there may not be many publications that have cited it yet. Make note of when your article was published.
Next to Cited by is a link to Related articles. These are articles that Google Scholar is suggesting may be of interest to your, based on its internal algorithms.
Be sure to set your library links to Kwantlen Polytechnic University Library in Google Scholar settings so that you'll have full text access to articles within the library's collection.
See this KPU Library FAQ for how to do this.
In Summon, look for a similar feature below the items in your search results. Cited by brings you articles within Summon that cite your article. Cites brings you the articles referenced in your article that are indexed by Summon. The Related articles feature which will provide you additional articles related to your first one.
Most of the library's article databases have similar features. Terminology varies, but look for Times cited, Cited by, Recommended articles and so on for additional ways to locate relevant articles.