Community Scholars Portal

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

To search for and read thousands of 'grey literature' publications (policy documents, white papers, and more), sign in to Policy Commons. 

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

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.

Google Scholar Library link for CSP

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.

Clearing cookies in the Portal (Troubleshooting access problems)

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:

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

Doing a literature review

Community Scholars are searching, reading, evaluating, and synthesizing research literature for practical purposes. Visit Literature Reviews for Community Organizations for strategies and resources to help with this process.

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.

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.).

What's available?

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

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