SOC 207 - Thomas
Secondary Sources
Secondary sources, on the other hand, offer an analysis or a restatement of primary sources. They often attempt to describe or explain primary sources. Some secondary sources not only analyze primary sources, but use them to argue a contention or to persuade the reader to hold a certain opinion. Examples of secondary sources include dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, and books and articles that interpret, analyze, or review research works.
Finding Peer-Reviewed Articles at CSN Libraries
You can search through the CSN Libraries Find Articles page to search for peer-reviewed research on your topic. If you need to find out whether a source is peer-reviewed or not? Use Ulrichsweb to search by journal title name to see if your material has been through a rigorous peer-reviewed process.
On the results screen from any database choose the types of material you want. Including availability, "peer-reviewed" articles, publication dates, and subject areas you want to include (each database will look different, but the limiters on the left side of databases remains the same):
- Peer Reviewed Journals and Full Text Online under Availability
- Journal Articles under Content Type
- 2014 as From year under Publication Date
- Choose relevant topic areas under Subject (ex. Microbiology, Genetics)
Finding Research for ENG223 - Plague & Pandemic Databases to Find Research
- Search all ArticlesGreat for finding journal articles from different library collections. Articles within this search are limited to: Peer-Reviewed, most recent 5 years, and subject specific.
- Library CatalogFind print books such as Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language by Scott Liddell and Linguistics of American Sign Language
by Clayton Valli.
- ProQuest Central This link opens in a new windowInterdisciplinary collection of magazine, journal and newspaper articles.
- Proquest: Social Sciences This link opens in a new windoweBooks, journals and trade publications related to the social sciences.
- ProQuest EBook Central This link opens in a new windowFull length books on a wide range of scholarly topics.
- Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new windowAcademic journals, magazines, reports, books, and select newspapers on virtually any subject.
- EBSCO Complete This link opens in a new windowSearch across more than 20 subject collections for a variety of sources including journal articles and books.
- Criminal Justice Periodicals This link opens in a new windowU.S. and international criminal justice journals, providing information on criminal justice, law enforcement, corrections administration, drug enforcement, rehabilitation, family law and industrial security.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowAn archive of scholarly articles from a variety of disciplines: business, health, literature, math, the sciences, and more. Current issues of journals are not available in JSTOR.
- Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection This link opens in a new windowPeer-reviewed journals related to psychology, psychiatry and related behavioral sciences.
Google Scholar
For all kinds of tricky citations, Google Scholar can be your saving grace. If you have just a partial citation (like an author, date, and subject) use the Advanced Search in Google Scholar to piece together the missing information.
Many universities are now publishing theses and dissertations in institutional repositories, which are freely available on the web and searchable via Google Scholar. You may be able to find recent dissertations on your research subject online!
Conferences and associations also sometimes publish their proceedings and publications freely online, so they may be accessible through Google Scholar.
Google Scholar is a go-to source for academic librarians, and you can use it too!