Your library assignment require that you use peer reviewed references. What is a peer reviewed reference? This short explanation of Peer Review answers that question: Peer Reviewed.
How can you tell if a reference is peer reviewed? OneSearch and many other databases provide a mechanism for limiting your search results to peer reviewed material. See the example on the right.
However, it's not exactly that straight forward. These refine tools do limit your search to articles in peer reviewed journals, but not every article in these journals is peer reviewed. Some peer reviewed journals include book reviews and news articles for example. Use your critical thinking skills -- if the article is describing research results and has a list of references it is very likely a peer reviewed article.
Some databases don't provide the option of limiting to only peer reviewed journals. Compendex is one example. However, Compendex only indexes research journals so it's likely that most articles you find in Compendex have been peer reviewed. Again, use your critical thinking skills.
What about handbooks and reference books? Handbooks are generally written by multiple authors under the direction of an editor. Major reference works such as the ASM Handbooks have editorial boards or committees that oversee the content. References from these publications should be acceptable for your project.
Standards can also be considered peer reviewed. Standards are created by committees under the auspices of professional societies such as ASTM, ASME, and IEEE.
More about peer review:
When you're doing a major research paper it's likely you'll need books, articles, reports, or other materials that are not in the Cal Poly Pomona Library. You have several options:
Other CSU Libraries
Use your Cal Poly Pomona library card (Bronco card) to check out books at any CSU library.
Document Delivery
Use Document Delivery to obtain copies of articles from journals not available in this Library. You can also request books not available through Link+.
You'll have to register before using Document Delivery for the first time. Once you've registered you can usually submit your article request directly from the database citation. Just click the GET IT button. If we have a subscription to the journal you'll find a link to the article. If we don't have a subscription you'll find a link to Document Delivery. When you get to Document Delivery just log in and you'll find the request form has already been filled out for you!
OneSearch is the Library's all purpose search interface. OneSearch brings in search results (books, articles, more) from the Library Catalog and most of our databases. OneSearch is still under development and has some quirks. Take a look at our OneSearch FAQ to learn more.
IMPORTANT! OneSearch does not actually search everything. OneSearch does NOT search Compendex, our primary engineering database, and it does not search the full text of other important engineering resources such as IEEE Xplore or Knovel.
Go ahead and try OneSearch, but for most of your engineering research you will have better results if you use one of the databases recommended for your major. Look for the Databases link in the Featured Links area of the Library homepage.