Indigenous Studies

A scholarly journal (also called academic journals, scientific journals, or peer reviewed journals) is a periodical that publishes articles written by experts in a particular field of study. The articles are written for experts or students of the field, and use academic or technical language. "Peer-reviewed (also called refereed) journals have an editorial board of subject experts who review and evaluate submitted articles before accepting them for publication. A journal may be a scholarly journal but not a peer-reviewed journal." [1]

TIP: When you find a journal article that is relevant to your research/writing, check the reference list to find similar articles.

At Okanagan College Library, we use OCtopus to search for library materials. You can start your search here: okanagan.bc.ca/library

There are a few ways to limit your search results to scholarly/academic journals. Once you have performed your search you can use the limiters in the "Refine Results" column to the left of your search results. There are a couple of limiters that you can use:

• Limit To: select "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals"
• Resource Types: select "Academic Journals"

Remember, you can put multiple limiters on your results! You can choose both "Scholarly Journals" and "Academic Journals" and other limiters as well. These will all help to narrow your results to find the most relevant materials for you.

You can also search directly within specific journals. Check out the selection of journals with Indigenous content available through OC Library in the next section of this guide.

Keep in mind:

• Online resources can often be emailed, printed, or downloaded.
• Renew your checked out materials online, by phone, or in person at your campus library.
• Place Request links next to library materials allows you to request to have a book or DVD delivered from one OC Campus Library to another.
• Restricted access materials in some databases will require you to be logged into your library account in order to see them. If you are having trouble accessing material, make sure you are logged in using your myOkanagan username (e.g. 300xxxxxx@stu.oc or 300xxxxxx.emp.oc) and password.
• Save items for later by using the "tools" buttons to the right of the item's record. We recommend e-mailing the item to yourself or copying the permalink to the item (TIP: don't copy the web browser URL as it will not take you back to your item later).

Below is a small selection of journals available to you through the OC library and online (open access). If you don't see something here that relates to your subject area of interest, try searching the library e-journals. In addition to performing a search, you can browse databases and subjects.

Note the different terminology that is used to indicate subjects related to Indigenous topics: Indigenous, Native, American Indian, Aboriginal, Decolonization, etc.