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Public Health: The Way We Live, Work and Play: HRPR 1001

For students in HRPR 1001

How to Identify Scholarly Journals

image of a scholarly article
 
Interactive tutorial
 
Following is a checklist of some typical qualities of a scholarly journal article:
  • Is there an abstract or summary at the beginning of the article?
  • Does the article include a bibliography?
  • Are there in-text citations (e.g., parenthetical references, endnotes, or footnotes)?
  • Does the author use specialized language, relevant to the subject area?
  • What is the author's affiliation or credentials (e.g., is it with a college, university, or research organization)?
  • Who is the audience of the article? Is it written for fellow scholars in the field, for practitioners, or for a general/popular audience?
  • How many pages is the article? Is it substantial in length?
  • What kind of images does it contain? Scholarly journals tend to have few, if any images, but often contain charts, graphs, or data tables.
  • Does the journal title refer to an academic discipline or specialized field of study? Often the title will include words such as journalresearch, or review.

CONTENT ADAPTED FROM "RESEARCH & CITATION HELP," COLBY COLLEGE LIBRARIES

Common Public Health Journals

These are some of the journals that publish public health topics. They are peer reviewed and may use either APA or AMA style. 

When you search for articles in a database such as PubMed, you may find one of these. Be aware that this is not a comprehensive list of all journals that publish on public health topics. Due to the wide interdisciplinary nature of public health there are many more. 

To find a specific journal title, search the library holdings through the Journals tab

  • American Journal of Preventive Medicine
  • American Journal of Public Health
  • Health Education & Behavior
  • Journal of Adolescent Health
  • Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
  • Journal of Community Health
  • Journal of Urban Health
  • Public Health Nutrition
  • The British Medical Journal
  • The Lancet
  • The New England Journal of Medicine