Respiratory Care

To make your research and writing stronger, use articles that are from quality research journals. Those journals are known by different terms:

• scholarly
• peer-reviewed
• academic

These journals provide high-quality, authoritative research articles because they are peer-reviewed: that is, when a researcher submits an article to be published, the journal editors send the article to other experts who review the article for accuracy, integrity, and the importance of its ideas. The journal will publish the article only if it passes this process of peer-review.

Scholarly/peer-reviewed journals in respiratory care and health care are numerous! Here are just a few examples:

• JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association
• Respiratory Care
• Respiratory Research

How to find scholarly/peer-reviewed journal articles

In almost any library database, when you enter a keyword search, you can also check a box that will limit your search to scholarly/peer-reviewed articles only.

In fact, many specialized health databases, like PubMed and MEDLINE, contain predominantly scholarly/peer-reviewed articles. In those databases, you don't even have to limit your search to scholarly/peer-reviewed. So if you are searching for high-quality research articles in the field of respiratory care and health care, definitely try those databases! 

How to recognize a scholarly/peer-reviewed article when you see one

In health care fields, scholarly/peer-reviewed articles will be easy to recognize. They will be written for medical professionals, usually in technical language. Often, they will have a structure and headings that look like this:

• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion

And they will usually have a long list of cited references. (HINT: look through these reference lists to find additional thesis-supporting resources!)

Other good sources to use in your research and writing

• Scholarly/peer-reviewed articles can help you make your research project better! But, depending on your topic, it can also be good to use information from "trade" magazines, which contain practical, easy-to-read information and advice for respiratory therapists and other health care professionals.
• Other good sources to use in your research, besides scholarly/peer-reviewed journals, are trustworthy, authoritative medical websites, such as medlineplus.gov and cdc.gov.