*History

Peer reviewed journals, also called scholarly or academic journals, publish original research in a specific field. 

Other scholars (peers) working in similar research areas review the articles before publication. 

How can you tell whether a publication is scholarly or not? Most peer reviewed/scholarly journals share the following traits:

• Author's credentials and institutional affiliation (where they work) listed
• Formal structure, often includings sections such as abstract, literature review, and bibliography
• Citations to other peer-reviewed publications

Examples of peer-reviewed publications:

• Journal of American History
• Journal of Contemporary History

Ask a librarian if you are unsure whether a source is peer-reviewed.

More History databases

This guide will walk you through finding the full text of an article, starting from the main library search. 

1. From search results, first make sure what you're interested in is an article. It will be indicated by "Article" before the title - where the green check is in the picture. Then click on the article title, indicated by the red arrow in the image. 

2. Click "Available Online", indicated by the red arrow. This will show you the options for accessing the full article. This article has three options - highlighted by the red bracket. Pay attention to the dates listed under the title - you want to pick a source that includes the date of your article. All three options here are fine. Click any of the areas at which the green arrows point (titles and symbols). This will take you to the full article.

NOTE: Sometimes database links will take you to the journal rather than the individual article. If that happens, you can use the citation to find the article. Look at the year, volume and issue in the citation, and use them to navigate to the article for which you're looking.

3. Download the article. The download option will look a bit different in different databases. JSTOR, where the below pic is from, has the download button at the top, above the PDF viewer. 

Watch this video to learn how to locate full-text articles from a database citation. Note that Full Text Finder is no longer used. You will now see "Click Here to Check for Full Text".