In some of your assignments in SOCI121 you will be asked to present a research-based article on a sociology-related topic. Depending on the specifics of your assignment, the topic you will be researching may be based on a chapter from your textbook, a film you watch in class, or a lecture presented by your instructor.
These kinds of articles are also sometimes called scholarly articles, academic articles, or peer-reviewed articles, and the specific ones you are looking for contain original research. If you don't have much experience performing research with library materials then you might not be sure what you're looking for, so let's break it down (note that there are three tabs to view in the section below):
You are no doubt familiar with magazines and newspapers, but you may not be as familiar with journals. Here are the differences to note:
A research article follows a very specific format. Understanding what these parts are will help you to identify if what you're looking at is a research article:
When searching for research-based or scholarly articles look for:
The final thing you should know about these types of articles is how they are created an published. As mentioned earlier, they are sometimes called "peer-reviewed" articles and you may see that as a refining option when searching the databases. This short video explains the unique way that articles like these make it to publication: