[This 3-part study tip about writing essays was provided by Lindsey Martin-Bowen, J.D.  She is a lecturer with the English and PACE departments, as well as the WEPT Coordinator for UMKC.  For the third study tip of the series, Prof. Martin-Bowen explains what scholarly sources are and how to find them.  Next week, we’ll take a look at how to integrate scholarly sources once you have identified the ones you want to use in your essay.]

A scholarly source is peer-reviewed and generally runs in a journal affiliated with a university.  Scholarly articles will always be written by at least one author and are often written by two or more.  Almost always, the article will include internal citations and a bibliography (or Works Cited page).  Generally, scholarly articles run several pages in length.

Here’s an efficient way to find scholarly articles online—and it’s more reliable than Google Scholar:

• Use the UMKC Libraries webpage.  Many teachers using Blackboard will post a link to it under Web Resources.
• Use the databases Project Muse, JSTOR, or Ebscohost.  Click on the buttons for PEER-REVIEWED and FULL-TEXT.  Then, when you can,
• Click on the PDF versions.  That way, the text will appear—complete with page numbers—in the exact format that ran in the hard copy of the journal.  Thus, scholars will have no difficulty finding the page numbers to use in the internal citations.

If you need help using the any of the library’s databases, please contact the UMKC reference librarians at 235-1534.