Easy Start: Popular Online Sources
in English and Film
Online Resources in English and Film (Full List)
You can think of peer review as a "stamp of approval" from academic experts. When an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal, readers can be certain that experts in the relevant field have read it and, independent of their own particular opinions, verified it to meet a high standard of scholarship. Scholars rely on peer review to ensure that the conversation they have with each other is always based in good research and the established standards of their discipline.
The peer review system is analogous to systems familiar to you in everyday life. Just as you might feel better to see a Health Department certificate in the window of a restaurant or a "Verisign" logo on a website that requires you to enter sensitive information, the peer-review system allows for an efficient judgment of trustworthiness.
If an article has been published in a peer-reviewed journal, you can assume that:
Google and Wikipedia are great resources for their specific purposes. Unfortunately for you, in neither case is "returning results that meet a high standard of scholarship" among those purposes.
Google returns results on the basis of popularity. While popular beliefs are often correct, we can all think of instances where they are not. Since the internet itself--the source of all Google results-- includes all sorts of misinformation, one simply cannot be sure that results returned from Google are absolutely reliable.
In everyday life, absolute reliability isn't as much of a priority as it is in academic scholarship and often, the type of information we're looking for in Google are generally undisputed questions of fact. But "generally undisputed" topics usually don't make their way into academic scholarship. And since academic scholarship relies on the peer-review system, academic articles will tend not to appear on websites searched by Google, because being freely posted in such places might imply that it doesn't meet the standards of peer review.
Wikipedia makes certain efforts at reliability that search engines like Google do not, including its own system of peer-review. Still, Wikipedia has different priorities than an academic peer-reviewed resource, and therefore it shouldn't be used in place of an academic source. Wikipedia's design trades absolute reliability for convenience and quick updating. You can never be certain that what you read on Wikipedia doesn't include misinformation that has yet to be corrected. Likewise, while Wikipedia does include a system for citation and the editorial evaluation of its entries, its real-time and open updating means that you can never be absolutely certain you're reading good information.
But perhaps most important is the fact that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are general information sources best used for gaining a quick overview of a topic and finding a list of resources and topics to guide you in further exploration. Encyclopedia articles generally avoid controversy, and the low level of detail provided by an encyclopedia is not going to be sufficient for your academic work.
It isn't! You just need to know where to look. If you start in the right place, you can usually find a relevent, peer-reviewed source for your research in even fewer clicks than it would take on the internet. You can even use a lot of the searching skills you've learned using sources like Google and Wikipedia.
The easiest way to find a peer-reviewed article is through one of the databases to which the library subscribes. There are a lot of these databases and many are divided by discipline. Here in the English Library, we've created a few web guides for finding articles specifically about literature and film: a beginner's guide and a full list.
Other libraries have similar lists for electronic and print resources in their disciplines. You can search this list for links to the other subject and departmental libraries.
All of the Library's databases and electronic resources "live" in the Online Research Resources section of the library's website. If you prefer, you can also search by discipline through Online Research Resources.
University LibraryFor comments on this page contact: Harriett Green.
Last modified by: Harriett Green on 9/16/09