Last Updated: 12 Feb, 2021     Views: 330

A scholarly source can be an academic book or a peer-reviewed journal article. The easiest way to find scholarly sources is OneSearch - the search box on the library home page.

Sometimes your assignment topic sounds simple but it is actually difficult to find scholarly sources if you use the words in the assignment topic. This is because general terms such as communication, listening, hearing, are common words and searching on them brings too many results. It is easy to come up with other search terms for good results when searching for scholarly sources.

It is best to start with a search on a phrase such as:

"communication skills" AND listening

Then, use Set preferred disciplines at the top of your search results to limit to the discipline you want, for example, Business or Nursing. This will give you some useful results.

Often you will find that if you read your text book or recommended readings in the subject, you will be introduced to useful terms like "active listening" that discuss the difference between listening and hearing. You could adjust your search to use a more detailed term:

"communication skills" AND "active listening"

With the other options available in OneSearch to limit to particular content types (e.g. eBooks/Books or Journal articles) and Available Online you will easily find good sources no matter your location. Note that the term "Peer reviewed" applies only to scholarly journal articles and conference papers, so if you click on this filter in OneSearch you will no longer have any book results appear. A book from the university library collection, although not "peer reviewed" is still a scholarly source*.

If you use OneSearch you can easily save your search results by clicking on the folder icon next to the source you want to keep. If you do this and email yourself the results, you will find it easy to locate the details to cite and reference your sources correctly in your essay.

The short video here will show you more about using OneSearch.

*This guide explains more about what makes a scholarly source 

Good luck!