Finding scholarly information for your report

Always read all the information related to your assessments to understand exactly what you need to do. Make sure you check your course website.

Scholarly sources can be referred to as academic sources or peer reviewed (refereed). These can include journal articles, books, book chapters, reports and other sources. A scholarly source is one which is of appropriate quality, including reliability, accuracy and timeliness.

To find out more about scholarly sources look at the resources below:

For this report, you are asked to discuss the validity of this statement:

"There is a need to rethink and improve traditional ways of managing construction projects in order to adopt the principles of the circular economy."

Start by breaking down the question:

• First, identify the task words that tell you what to do for the assignment, e.g. discuss, compare or analyse
• Next identify the content words, e.g. what are the key concepts you are discussing?
  • Rethink and improve
  • Traditional ways
  • Managing construction projects
  • Construction industry
  • Principles of circular economy
• Last, identify any parameters, e.g. you need to find scholarly sources

Click on the "i" to discover the key concepts in the statement below:

Once you have found your key concepts (content words), use these to form your search strategy.

Table or map out possible alternative keywords or synonyms for each of your content words:

Check out the following links for more help with planning your search:

The Library Collection and Google Scholar (tab next to Library Collection) are good places to start searching for scholarly information.

1. Type your main concepts into the search box:

• Tip: use double quotes to keep concepts together as a phrase.

2. To broaden your search add synonyms using the connector OR:

• Tip: Use brackets (...) to group synonyms together.

3. Change your search around to find different results:

4.Use the 'Refine my results' menu (left side) to apply the Peer-reviewed Journals filter.

Business Source Ultimate

1. Start by putting each different concept on a new line:

• Tip: use double quotes "..." around any concepts you want to keep together as phrases.

2. What happens if you add another concept?

3. Add synonyms using the connector OR. This is important as not everyone refers to ideas in the same way. This will help broaden your search:

To look for recent scholarly articles you can refine the results with the limits:

• Peer Reviewed
• Publication Date range

ScienceDirect

All journal articles in ScienceDirect are peer reviewed.

To search ScienceDirect select the Advanced search option (located on the right side).

1. In the field 'Find articles with these terms' enter your different concepts:

• Tip: If you are not finding what you want, change the search terms you use for different results.

2. Use the Refine By (left) menu to refine your search further by:

• Years
• Article type (e.g. review or research articles)

If you need help writing your report visit: