How do I find quality journal articles, such as peer reviewed balanced coverage, of a topic?
Answer
in Academic Search Complete, the Central Index, or other more in-depth subject databases, after you run your keyword search, you limit to "Peer Review" using the facets in the column on the left. This insures that the results have been reviewed by experts before they were accepted for publication.
Then you look for the following elements: an author with their credentials (degree and organization), a Introduction that basis the work on previous work (references to earlier publications), a hypothesis to test, a Methodology section to test the hypothesis, Data created during the testing, Conclusions based upon the data and other references, and references to the earlier work through a bibliography.
You may occasionally find Letters, Opinions, or Review articles. These are NOT primary research materials.