Research Guide: Scholarly Journals

Use this guide to learn more about scholarly journals and the peer-review process

Reading the Citation from a Database

Reviewing the citation

The image below shows an image of an article's record in the library's database.

(click on image to enlarge)

this is a screenshot of the record for the article in a database page. It shows the title, followed by additional info about the article, such as the title of the publication it comes from, the date, the author, the length, etc.

  • Notice that the record shows the title, the author/s, the title of the large publication it was published in, along with things like the date, the length. It also includes a list of Subject headings - these are the controlled vocabulary terms the database uses to store and find information. 

Reading the Citation from the Article

Gathering information from the first page of the article

The image below shows the first page of that article as it appears in the actual journal.

(click on image to enlarge)

This is a screenshot of the first page of the article, it highlights the title, and where on the page that you can find the title, date, volume and issue number, and other info about the journal article.

  • Notice the information on the first page of the article. As shown in the image above, you should look for the name of the journal the article was published in; this information is often at the very top or the very bottom of the page. 
  • You should expect to see information about the specific issue of the publication - the volume and number or volume and issue.
  • You should also expect to see the names of the author or authors, along with a note mentioning their credentials or what university or organization they are affiliated with. Sometimes you will just see the abbreviations for their degrees (Like Ph.D or MFA) next to their name/s.