Surgical Technology: Articles

Scholarly articles are:

in-depth |  written by experts |   validated with technical language, abstracts, literature reviews, methodologies, tables, graphs, and conclusions |  reviewed by experts | given a bibliography

Popular articles are:

brief overviews of topics |  written by journalists |  easily read by most people |  illustrated with colorful photographs or pictures |  reviewed by editors | not given a bibliography

There is no one way to easily tell if an article is a research article like there is for peer-reviewed articles in the Libraries' databases.  The only way to be sure is to read the article to verify that it is written by the researchers and that they have explained all of their findings, in addition to listing their methodologies, results, and any conclusions based on the evidence collected. 

All that being said, there are a few key indicators that will help you to quickly decide whether or not your article is based on original research. 

• View the PDF version so you can plainly see the major subdivisions that should be present in a research article:
  • Literature Review or Background
  • Methods
  • Results
  • Conclusions
  • Discussion
• Read through the abstract (summary) before you attempt to find the full-text PDF. The abstract of the article usually contains those subdivision headings where each of the key sections are summarized individually. 

To log in to the databases, you will use the same Rivermail e-mail address and password you set up to log into MyPioneerPortal. First-time users of MyPioneerPortal can create their password by following the instructions you receive in your activation email. To reset your password, select "Need help signing in." The librarians cannot reset MyPioneerPortal passwords, if you need additional assistance visit the tutorial on MyPioneerPortal.