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EES 200 Earth History Spring 2024

Prof. McDermott

Periodicals

Read the following, then go to the next box for resources to search.

"Periodicals" for the purpose of the assignment consist of magazine or newspaper articles, which are popular articles.

To understand the difference between popular and scholarly articles, review the page below titled Scholarly versus Popular Articles.

Popular publications can do these things for you:

  • provide general background information before you turn to the academic journal literature;
  • help identify late breaking news about important scientific discoveries or developments;
  • point you to academic studies; for example, a newspaper or magazine or other popular publication may give a journalistic account of a scientific research project, mention its principal researchers, and mention the academic journal in which the research was published. You can then look up the scholarly journal article where the research was published.(You will have to assess the accuracy of the journalistic or popular accounts by turning to the research as published in a scholarly source.)

See the boxes below for databases that will help you find popular articles. 

Finding Magazine and Newspaper Articles

Find at least one popular article about your topic. It can be from a newspaper or magazine, or from the open web. Make sure it looks reliable. 

See the resources below. Some tips about using them:

1.  Research Library and Academic Search Ultimate contain both popular and scholarly articles. Make sure to use the limiters/filters to restrict to which type you want.

2,  Note: if the popular article reports recent scholarly research and mentions where the research was published, that points to a scholarly article to use for the exercise. For example, you might see a phrase in the popular article that says “Researchers at XYZ University reported an exciting new discovery last week in the journal ‘ABC.’” Look for the scholarly article in the journal ABC.

Other Popular or Semi-popular Sources

Other places to check; make sure to limit your searches to the last few years.You can look these up by doing a journals search in ASA, Lehigh's online catalog on the library homeppage, or on google (with VPN on if you are off-campus).

  •     Eos
  •     Earth magazine (American Geosciences Institute)
  •     Discover Magazine: "The newsmagazine of science".
  •     New Scientist.
  •     Science (see news)
  •     Science News
  •     Scientific American
  •     The Scientist