Environ 211: Social Sciences and Environmental Problems

Characterisitics:

• Often lacking in complete references or citations, though author may refer to other works within article.
• Often written by journalists or professional writers (as opposed to scholars and researchers)
• Written for less targeted, more general audiences
• Not Peer-Reviewed (referreed)
• Often written in a style that communicates information understandable to general audiences (less technical jargon)
• Often follow less structured format
• Often contain visually interesting photos or images

Examples:

• Mother Jones
• National Geographic
• Letters to the editor and book reviews within scholarly journals

Look up these four titles in Library Catalog Search and evaluate whether the publication is peer-reviewed

• Scientific American
• Applied Ocean Research
• Global Environmental Politics
• Green Places

Characteristics:

• Always provide list of citations for information sources
• Written by scholars, researchers, specialists, and experts in a particular field
• Written for specific audience
• Often subject to peer-review
• Often contains technical jargon or discipline-specific vocabulary
• Often contain standard elements in particular order (Title-Abstract-Materials and methods-Results-Discussion)
• Often contain graphics such as charts and diagrams that visually represent information referred to in the paper.

Examples:

• Nature
• Journal of Great Lakes Research
• Global Change Biology

Scholarly works are often challenging reads for members of the general public, since the articles are written with a certain expectation that the readers are somewhat familiar with the concepts and terminology contained within the articles.

Sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether a publication is peer-reviewed. Many databases (indexes) will allow you to limit your search results to peer-previewed titles, but others do not.

Ulrich's Periodicals Directory is an online tool that will allow you to verify whether a title is peer-reviewed.

Just do a title search for the questionable title in Ulrich's. If you see a little referree icon "" next to the title, then you can rest assured that the publication is peer reviewed. However, use your best judgement if you question whether a source is peer-reviewed. Certain documents in peer-reviewed publications (such as book reviews and letters to the editor) are NOT peer-reviewed, even if the publication iteself is designated as peer reviewed.