Refereed or Peer-reviewed?
Articles published in refereed or peer-reviewed journals are subjected to a strict review process. One or more experts on the subject act as referees who review the article before it is accepted for publication. This process is designed to ensure the article is accurate, well researched, and contributes to the body of knowledge a field. Peer-reviewed is synonymous with refereed.
Key Journals
You can do a keyword search for a topic in any of the following online journals:
- Journal of clinical practice in speech-language pathology Online access to this journal is available with membership of the Speech Pathology Association of Australia. See website for details: https://www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/SPAweb/Members/Publications/Journal_of_Clinical_Practice.aspx
- Speech, language and hearingFormerly: Asia Pacific journal of speech, language, and hearing
Key subject databases (indexing journal articles)
- Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) This link opens in a new windowAMED provides an alternative medicine database for physicians, therapists, medical researchers and clinicians looking to learn more about alternative treatments with coverage being mainly European.
- CINAHL Ultimate This link opens in a new windowA core research database of Nursing and Allied Health information. Additional materials include Evidence-based Care Sheets, Quick Lessons and continuing Education Modules.
- Education Source This link opens in a new windowInternational education database. Covers Early Childhood to Higher Education, Multilingual Education, Health Education, and Testing
- ERICInternational education database, indexing journals and ERIC document reports from Education Resource Information Center. Use the limit options to limit a search to Journal Articles, then click on Findit@ECU to link to available full text.
- Linguistics Database This link opens in a new windowIndexed in Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA). Covers all aspects of the study of language including Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax and Semantics.
- MEDLINE This link opens in a new windowAn international database indexing the biomedical literature and produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). MeSH (medical subject headings) is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus, used in MEDLINE indexing.
- PsycINFO This link opens in a new windowContains peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health specifically Psycho-social, Psychological or Human Experiences.
- SpeechBITE This link opens in a new windowSpeech Pathology Database for Best Interventions and Treatment Efficacy is a database of intervention studies across the scope of speech pathology practice.
Australian databases
- Informit This link opens in a new window
An extensive range of authoritative subject-based databases featuring coverage of Australian and international information resources. Including Health, Engineering, Business, Education, Law, Humanities and Social Sciences.
Databases may be searched individually, or collectively by subject groupings or across all databases.
Citation databases
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Web of Science is a multidisciplinary abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, and provides both author and journal metrics (performance analytics) of the literature indexed in the database. - Scopus This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, and provides both author and journal metrics (performance analytics) of the literature indexed in the database.
PsycTests Databases
- PsycTESTS This link opens in a new windowPsycTESTS, produced by the American Psychological Association (APA), serves as a repository for a growing selection of psychological tests and measures. The database contains reviews of tests and some full text. Surveys useful for health sciences are also included.
- PsycTESTS - SurveysUse the drop down option under Instrument Type to limit to Survey.
Evidence-based Health Databases
- BMJ Best Practice This link opens in a new windowPoint of care reference database. A clinical decision support tool known for its breadth of disease coverage, editorial quality and evidence-based methodology.
- Cochrane Library This link opens in a new windowA collection of databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. Find Systematic Reviews, Clinical Trials, Method Studies and more.
- How to use the Cochrane LibraryInformation on How to use the Cochrane Library including access to the self-paced tutorials
- JBI (Joanna Briggs Institute) This link opens in a new window Includes over 3,000 records across seven publication types: Evidence Based Recommended Practices, Evidence Summaries, Best Practice Information Sheets, Systematic Reviews, Consumer Information Sheets, Systematic Review Protocols, and Technical Reports.
- Trip Medical Database This link opens in a new window A clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care.
Searching Tips
1. Identify Key concepts:
- Inequality AND aggressive behaviour
- Attach* AND infan* (infant attachment)
2. Find Synonyms (alternative keywords):
- (aggression OR violence OR bullying)
- (youth OR adolesc* OR juvenile)
3. Use Truncation (putting * at the end of a word stem):
- infan* (infants, infantile, infancy)
- aggress* (aggressive, aggresson, aggressiveness)
4. AND (joins concepts and narrows the search)
- power AND crim*
- attach* AND infan*
5. OR (using synonyms to broaden the search)
- (aggress* OR violen* OR bully*)
- (child* OR infan* OR toddler)
6. "...." (inverted commas)
- "pulmonary embolism*"
- "multiple intelligence*"