AD 102 Journal Review: Get Started: Find Articles
AD 102 Journal Review Assignment
This guide is intended to support the AD 102 Journal Review Assignment. As a refresher, you will be choosing two peer-reviewed journal articles that have these qualities:
- published since 2018
- must be research that uses a control group (evidenced by words such as cross-matched samples, randomized, control group, double or single blind etc.)
- is about a specific drug and its effects or treatment outcomes (for example, the effect of cocaine on
the memory; or marijuana and its effects on the lungs)
As a reminder, peer reviewed journal articles:
- are written by researchers, writing up the results of a study they did themselves
- are written for other experts (not college students or librarians!) using technical and scientific vocabulary
- include detailed information about who or what was studied, the methods used, the results of the study, and the authors' conclusions.
The value of reading peer reviewed articles is you learn exactly how the research was conducted. You can compare studies yourself, using information from the original source.
- DrugFacts, Understanding Drug Use and AddictionFrom the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is an agency of the National Institute of Health.
Recommended databases
- Medicine & Psychology (EBSCOhost)Articles from Psychology, Nursing and Allied Health, and Medical journals. A good source for addiction studies research.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowFull text for more than 1,000 peer-reviewed life sciences, Health Science, physical sciences, and engineering journals with citation information for thousands more. Look for the "Full-text available" indicators to view articles online. View the Science Direct handout.
- PubMedFrom the National Library of Medicine, PubMed is free on the web and has biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
Full text not available? Use PCC Library Interlibrary Loan to request the article, and receive it in 3-5 days.
Need Help?
Finding relevant scientific research on a topic and citing it correctly are skills that take practice. Librarians have had a lot of practice, so reach out if you need help or hit a roadblock.
Schedule a Research Help appointment with a Librarian (online or in-person)
Keyword searching
Don't type a whole sentence into the database search box.
For example, if you are researching the effect of cocaine on short term memory and you are looking for studies that used a control group, your initial search should be: cocaine short term memory "control group"
Another example: if you are looking for articles about treatment outcomes for opioid addiction and you want studies that used randomized samples, your initial search should be: opioid addiction treatment outcomes randomized
Hint: If you aren't sure which impacts/effects of a drug or its treatment that you want to study, start by searching for the name of the drug and one of the phrases for control group, to see what aspects of the drug or its treatment have been studied and published. This may help give you ideas. For example: heroin and "single-blind" OR heroin and "control group"