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Community Scholars Portal

Sign in to the Community Scholars Portal to search for and read thousands of articles and ebooks. See what's available!

Community Scholars Portal
Have an account? Search for articles and books now.
Policy Commons for Community Scholars
Have an account? Search for and read thousands of "grey literature" publications (policy documents, white papers, and more).

Registered Community Scholars, use the barcode and password sent to you by email. If you need help locating these, contact your librarian.

Search for and read thousands of "grey literature" publications (policy documents, white papers, and more).

Search Policy Commons

Research tips and strategies

If you'd like some assistance using the Portal, check out this tips and strategies sheet, contact your librarian, or watch the video below:

Try the Browser Access Bookmarklet for accessing Community Scholars materials outside the Portal

If you find articles/other resources using websites other than the Community Scholars Portal (e.g. Google Scholar, PubMed, or journal websites), you may come across sources that require you to pay for access. This bookmarklet routes your computer’s access through the Community Scholars Portal, ensuring that you have access to material available to Community Scholars.

For those Community Scholars who are familiar with and use Google Scholar, you can now use that tool to locate and access CSP materials. Here's how to configure things:

  • go to scholar.google.com
  • click on the "three bars" menu at top left
  • click on "Settings"
  • click on Library links (still at top left)
  • search for Community Scholars Portal in the search box
  • check the check box

After that set-up, you'll be able to search in Google Scholar and access materials directly using the "Access for CSP" links you'll see on the right hand side. You still need to log in with your barcode and password, when prompted to do so.

Tips on reading and evaluating academic papers

This video provides some tips for getting the most out of the academic articles you find. Rather than reading the papers all the way through from beginning to end, consider focusing on the most important sections of the paper to help you save time and get the most out of each resource.

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

UBCiSchool. (2013, January 17). How to read an academic paper [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/SKxm2HF_-k0. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. 

There are plenty of different lenses you can bring to evaluating an academic paper. Once you've chosen some papers to evaluate closely, try reading them with a critical eye, and addressing the five Cs referred to in this paper (Links to an external site.).

The five C's for evaluating a research paper

Category: What type of article is this? A measurement paper? An analysis of an existing system? A description of a research prototype?

Context: Which other papers is it related to? Which theoretical bases were used to analyze the problem? Are there other contexts that make this paper generalizable or constrain it?

Correctness: Do the assumptions appear to be valid? (if you've got an eye for stats, you may also wonder if the results and conclusions appear to be valid)

Contributions: What are the paper’s main contributions? 

Clarity: Is the paper well written?

What's available?

Credentialed Community Scholars can access >20,000 titles: journals, ebooks, and reference works in the following collections:

Collections available for Community Scholars
  • Cambridge Books Online
  • Cambridge Histories Online
  • Cambridge Journals
  • E-Duke Books Scholarly Collection
  • E-Duke Journals Scholarly Collection
  • Oxford University Press Journals
  • Oxford Bibliographies Online
  • Oxford Digital Reference
  • Oxford Handbooks Online
  • Oxford Reference Online
  • Oxford University Press Scholarship
  • Policy Commons
  • Sage Journals
  • Sage Knowledge
  • Sage Research Methods Online
  • Springer / Nature Journals
  • Springer Ebooks
  • Taylor and Francis Ebooks
  • Taylor and Francis Online (Journals)
  • Wiley Blackwell Online Journals 
  • Wiley Online Library Ebooks

Need some assistance? Contact Heather De Forest, heather_de_forest@sfu.ca, Community Scholars librarian.

 

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Access problems? Tips for technical troubleshooting

Clearing cookies in the Portal: If you are having trouble accessing full text when you use the Portal, you may have to clear your cookies. Watch a quick video to learn more:

 For Google Chrome

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If clearing cookies doesn't resolve the issue, please contact your librarian.