Locating Peer-Reviewed Research Referenced in Popular Media
Here are three ways to get to a referenced article, each depending on your situation:
- Online media often links to research articles. If you are on campus or have Lean Library set up, you will be guided to that article, or to Interlibrary Loan to request the article from another library (fast and free to you!).
- If there is not a link, or the citation you have is from the end of the article (unlinked), or from a printout, check to see if USU Libraries has the journal. If the library has the journal then look for the specific issue of the journal using the Journals, Magazines, and Newspapers search (also on the library's main page under Find). This also works better for much older articles.
- Also, Google Scholar can be handy for finding articles when you only have a citation. Try putting the article title in Google Scholar and see if it leads you to the article. You can sync Google Scholar so that it recognizes what you can access through USU.
Note: Google Scholar can be used for research as well, but the other databases in this guide (PubMed and Scopus) vet what they include in their databases more carefully than Google Scholar, so you may have to do some extra work to make sure sources you find in Google Scholar are credible.
Locating Articles on Your Disease or Health Finding
After locating the peer-reviewed article that your media piece was based upon, you'll be writing a paper based on the topic of that paper. You will need to search databases to locate more research articles on your topic.
Library Databases
- PubMedA free resource from the US National Library of Medicine and a key resource for medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences.
Tip:
Medline vs. PubMed
Medline is a subset of the publicly available Pubmed database. Medline contains articles from a set of carefully reviewed publications.
- ScopusDatabase of peer-reviewed journal articles. Full text is not included, but Article Linker provides access to full-text articles when available.
Tip:
Need the PDF/full-text?
Use Article Linker to search for full-text across all databases. If the article isn't available, choose Request via ILLiad or use interlibrary services to request a copy from another library.
Tip:
The Merrill-Cazier Library at USU subscribes to Lean Library, a browser plug-in that alerts you when online content is available through the library while you are doing your research both on and off-campus. Lean Library works no matter how you do your research.
Public Health Databases
CDC Stacks
CDC Stacks is a free, digital repository of CDC-produced scientific research and literature, offering full-text search, curated public health collections, historical reports, and open access materials.
Healthy People 2030
The Healthy People 2030 searchable database provides resources, data, and policy guidance to support health promotion and disease prevention efforts at national, state, and community levels.
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