Category: Post 2: Sources of Scientific Information

I chose an article entitled, Feeding ecology of Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Canada found in the Thompson Rivers University (TRU) Library. The article can be found in Marine Environmental Research.

Looking over this article, and from what I learned in our tutorial, I believe this is an academic peer-reviewed research article.

I’ve deemed this article as academic primarily due to the contributing authors and their affiliation with the Biology Department at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada (Figure 1). Two other contributing factors are that the journal this article was published in is considered a research journal (Figure 2) and secondly, TRU Library allows one to be able to refine their search to retrieve academic journals (Figure 3). The article would also be considered academic due to the amount of in-text citations (Figure 4) and the reference list at the end of the article (Figure 5).

I believe the article is peer-reviewed based off of the timeline outlining the manuscript received date, the revision date, and the publication date (Figure 6) and as previously mentioned, I specifically searched for peer-reviewed articles in the TRU Library (Figure 7).

References

Varela, J. L.,  Spares, A. D., Stokesbury, M. J. W. 2020, October 16. Feeding ecology of Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Canada. Marine Environmental Research. V 161. 105087, ISSN 0141-1136. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marenvres.2020.105087.

Figures

a. The article I chose is Citizen Science in Ecology: A Place for Humans in Nature and the source is from the online TRU Library. The article is from the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences  The link to the article is below:

https://nyaspubs-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/doi/full/10.1111/nyas.14340

b. Based on the tutorial, I classified the article as an academic peer-reviewed review article.

c. The article is academic due to the authors being experts in their field; I was able to click on each of the authors and see that all of the authors were affiliated with an academic institution, the School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah (Figure 1). The article is also considered academic because it includes in-text citations and has a reference list (Figures 2 and 3).  I was able to determine the article was peer-reviewed by the article having the publication history including the manuscript received date, the manuscript revised date, a version of online record date, and the online issue date (Figure 4).  I was also able to refine my search in the online TRU Library to only search for articles that have been peer-reviewed which also helped to verify the article was peer reviewed (Figure 5).  The article is a review article based on there being no methods or results section; the article also stated at the top that it was a review article (Figure 6).

References:

Adler, F. R., Green, A. M., & Şekercioğlu, Ç. H. (2020). Citizen science in ecology: a place for humans in nature. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1469(1), 52–64. https://doi-org.ezproxy.tru.ca/10.1111/nyas.14340

One of the source of ecological information that I am using is from the Alberta Parks website: https://www.albertaparks.ca/parks/kananaskis/fish-creek-pp/information-facilities/nature/plants/#:~:text=Common%20Plant%20Species,spruce%20forests%20with%20some%20grasslands.

This information is a city managed website that provides updated research material on the nature of various parks located in Alberta. The area that I referred to was for Fish Creek Provincial Park. This source is written and maintained by professionals in the field of ecology. This is confirmed by looking at the requirements necessary for applying to work for Alberta Parks. I know that the sections that I used in regards to Fish Creek are peer reviewed as they provide as list of updates to the webpages with who updated the information and their position within Alberta Parks.