Scholarly journals...

• are good to find results of scientific or academic research written for a scholarly audience
• provide in-depth analysis of a very specific area of your topic
• allow you to see the critical connections in the scholarly conversation - one scholarly article will cite how they drew their foundations or conclusions from other research.  YOU can then follow those citations to further your own research!

In this example, we will be searching the CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health) database. 

1. Use multiple relevant keywords to find articles on a subject. "AND" narrows and focuses. "OR" searches for ether term and returns more.
2. In CINAHL, be sure to limit to "Nutrition" at the Special Interest subset.
3. Limits to fill text are available. Leave it unchecked to find more. Use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) if we do not have it in another database.
4. Set a data limit to find current information.
5. Click on a title in the search results list to open the record. Read the abstract to determine relevance. Identify subject terms to find the most relevant articles. Lay terminology may not be as effective as medical terminology)

(click image to enlarge)

To find Medical Subject Headings:

1. Select CIHNAL Headings (in other Databases, look for Subject Terms or Thesaurus).

2. Enter your keywords and browse for medical subject headings.

3. Browse the list for relevant terminology. Notice narrower/more focused subjects. To apply, check the box next to a subject. Build slowly with one subject at a time. 

Can't Find the Full Text of a Book or Article?

1. Note down the author, name of book OR title of article, name of the magazine, journal or newspaper, and date of publication
2. Make an Interlibrary Loan Request using the following link so that the book can be sent to Green River's Holman Library for you to borrow: (NOTE: this process may take one week)

3.  To see an example of how to make an interlibrary loan request:

4. Or Ask a Librarian for help!

Find Scholarly Journal Articles

1. Click on the databases below to search for scholarly journal articles on your topic
2. After you search, remember to limit your results to "scholarly" or "academic" or "peer-reviewed" (databases use different words to refer to the same concept)
3. After you search, limit your results to "full text" so that you can see the entire article
4. When you choose an article, use the checklist below to make sure it is actually a scholarly journal article.

Other Useful Databases:

Holman Library subscribes to many relevant databases.