Getting Started With Research

The information timeline is one way to describe how information is produced, distributed, and how it changes over time. Knowing how information and our understanding of events changes over time can help you find the information you need. In general, but certainly not always, the reliability of information about a specific event can improve with time, as we tend to have a more comprehensive overview of events by then.

Check out Joshua Vossler’s great 10-minute video on the information cycle on Vimeo.

What is Peer Review and Why Is It Important?

The process of peer review is common in the academic community. Peer review refers to a process of review by an author’s professional peers (scholars or experts in their field). This review - which is conducted on articles or books chapters, for example, that an author or an expert in a particular field has written, - is done by experts in the same field is to help assess a scholarly works: 

• validity
• originality
• significance to the field/discipline

Once this type of review is completed, the scholarly work in question will either be accepted for publication or sent back to the author with suggestions for improvements or other work that should be done before publication is considered.

There are a few different types of peer review processes including:

• blind peer review: an article is sent to external reviewer outside of publishing/sponsoring organization and the author’s identity or the reviewer’s identity is unknown
• editorial board peer review: article reviewed by internal board of editors
• expert peer review: internal or external experts that review an article; author’s identity may be known or unknown
• open peer review: Full disclosure of peer author and reviewer identities; more transparent/participatory process 

The words “academic” and “scholarly” are often used interchangeably and are usually used to describe peer-reviewed articles. Some databases such as ArtSource (EBSCO) differentiate between “academic” (may or may not be peer-reviewed) and “scholarly” (MUST be peer-reviewed) articles.

Peer reviewed materials can be found in books and are commonly found in academic journals.

In addition to the hundreds of journals available online through our eResources List, here are a few peer-reviewed journal titles available in print format in the AUArts Library:

• Art Forum International
• Ceramics Monthly
• Frieze
• Ornamentum: Decorative Arts of Canada
• Textile Fibre Forum

Reading a scholarly, peer-reviewed article is like joining a very long, sometimes ancient, and ongoing conversation. Scholarly articles are generally written by experts in their field with academic training (often graduate students and professors at universities). Peer-review is a process whereby written work is sent to fellow scholars in the same field to ensure standards and quality of original research work before publication.

Unlike other articles, scholarly articles always include:

• citations (in-text, footnotes or endnotes)
• a list of works cited.

Rather than represent one person’s opinion, scholarly articles tend to acknowledge the much wider conversation, across space and time, in which their research has taken place. 

Looking for scholarly peer-reviewed articles?

• Use the chart below to better identify scholarly publications.
• To learn more about the typical parts of a scholarly journal article, check out Andreas Orphanides’ Anatomy of a Scholarly Article.
• When searching databases for peer-reviewed articles specifically, add filters to limit your search to peer-reviewed articles only.
• Watch this short clip, What are Scholarly and Non-Scholarly Resources from the Murdoch University Library to learn more about the differences between scholarly and non-scholarly articles. 

Survey texts tend to be books - and some are specifically textbooks - that cover large areas of art history in very broad strokes. These publications tend to focus on key artworks and/or buildings from particular periods.

What makes a survey text useful?

 A survey text can provide a very basic introduction to a vast subject, such as different areas of art.

These texts can offer:

• an organized way to understand art across thousands of years and multiple continents
• provide the reader some details about fundamental art historical practices like visual and contextual analysis
• provide the reader a basic understanding of how art reflects the ideas and perspectives of different cultures and time periods. 

Are there survey texts in the AUArts Library Collection?

Yes, library users can find survey texts in the physical collection and online. Some examples of titles that would be considered survey texts are:

• The visual arts : a history
• Art : a brief history
• Academies, Museums and Canons of Art

Speak to Library Staff for more information about the different survey texts that are available within the collection.