Welcome to the assessment help page for MAA725. The aim of this page is to assist you with your research for your assessment. In assessments, you are required to support your arguments with evidence in the form of peer reviewed articles. This page will explain peer reviewed articles and suggest search techniques to find articles relevant to the assessment.
Scholarly (peer review) journals and articles are the preferred resource to use in university assessments. They disseminate research and carry more credibility due to the peer review process where journal articles submitted by researchers are evaluated by experts in the field before being published. Unless indicated, it is important that you use scholarly (peer review) resources for your assessments.
A scholarly journal is a publication in which experts in a field submit articles. This is one of the primary means through which many disciplines discuss new findings, ideas and research.
Scholarly articles can also be referred to as academic or peer reviewed articles. They have been through a formal review process prior to publication to ensure they are academic in nature and meet specific criteria. They are written to inform or report research to a scholarly audience, and therefore tend to use technical language.
Many of these articles have been through a peer review process. They contain an abstract along with a list of references or other readings.
Evaluation of scientific, academic, or professional work by others working in the same field.
For help finding a particular journal or journal article, visit the Skills for Study help page
Here are some tips to help you identify a peer reviewed journal:
Click the play button below to watch the video on Peer Review.
Before you start researching for an assessment it is a good idea to plan out your search strategy. Have a think about the key words in your questions and use this downloadable search planner to get started.
For searching tips have a look at the detailed searching help pages on this Accounting guide. Have a look at:
Have a look at this video on searching the library:
Search for Digital Library Resources
For more help have a look at our Skills for Study page on the Library Website.
Use your key words together to get more relevant results.
Phrase searching narrows a search to show results that contain an exact phrase e.g. "positive accounting theory"
To conduct a phrase search, add double quote marks around two or more words you want to search for.
For example: searching for "lending agreements" will only return records that contain this exact term. The search will not return results where the word 'lending' or 'agreements' appear alone.
Truncation searching broadens a search to show results that include words with variation.
To conduct a truncation search, use an asterix character * to signify where the variation should exist.
Use this when you want to show results that include words with different endings. For example, searching for Audit* will return records that contain any of these words: 'Audit', 'Auditing', 'Audits', 'Auditor', etc.
Truncation can also be useful when spelling variations exist. For example, searching for organi*ation will return records that contain either of these words: 'organisation', 'organization'.
Truncation searching is sometimes referred to as wildcard searching or stemming.
Boolean searching is a type of search that allows users to combine keywords with operators (such as AND, OR, NOT) to produce more relevant results
Using the word AND between two search terms narrows a search to show results containing both terms.
Conversely, using the word OR between two terms broadens a search to show results containing either term.
Using NOT will narrow your search by excluding certain results from your search, however as the video on the next tab shows it should be used with care as this technique can remove relevant results.
The library search / Advanced Search includes about 80% of the library databases. If you are looking for some additional databases to search, try:
Here is a selection of key journals available online in the area of Accounting:
For more e-journals subscribed to by Deakin University Library click on the subject heading Accounting.
Google Scholar is great for locating academic articles!
Here are some reasons to be cautious when using Google Scholar to search for relevant, credible, academic resources:
It is important that you acknowledge all the sources you use in your writing so that you:
Refer to The Deakin Guide to Referencing and select the correct style for your unit. If you are unsure, Please check with the unit chair.