The Library has an extensive collections of journals available online. Search for specific titles with the UChicago e-journals list
Peer review is a process to help assess the quality, validity and originality of research reported in a scholarly article. An author sends an article to a journal. The editor of the journal in turn sends the article to experts in the field ("peers" of the author) who provide comments, suggest revisions, and make recommendations for or against publishing the article.
The Library subscribes to many article indexing databases in all areas of science, engineering and medicine. The following are those which are most useful in finding articles on chemical topics. For a complete list of all databases provided by the Library, visit the Database Finder.
Scientific articles on artist's materials, conservation science topics, and analysis may appear in a variety of journals. Finding one good scientific article on your topic of interest often leads you to others since scientific articles contain references to other related articles. The following are a selection of some peer-reviewed journals in conservation science and other areas that you will encounter when doing research about paint, pigments, coatings, ceramics, metals and other media.
Journal of Conservation & Museum Studies
The Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies is fully peer-reviewed and Open Access. It contains research on conservation science, artifact studies, restoration, museum studies, environment studies, collection management, and curation. Broad topical coverage but some good technical articles in scientific areas.
Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (current issues) (earlier issues available in JSTOR)
The Journal of the American Institute for Conservation is a primary vehicle for the publication of peer-reviewed technical studies, research papers, treatment case studies, and ethics and standards discussions relating to the broad field of conservation and preservation of historic and cultural works.
Studies in Conservation (current issues) (earlier issues available in JSTOR)
Studies in Conservation is the premier international peer-reviewed journal for the conservation of historic and artistic works. The intended readership includes the conservation professional in the broadest sense of the term: practicing conservators of all types of objects, conservation, heritage and museum scientists, collection or conservation managers, teachers and students of conservation, and academic researchers in the subject areas of arts, archaeology, the built heritage, materials history, art technological research, and material culture.
The Art Conservator
Art Conservator was founded in 2006: its full-color photography, innovative features, and accessible articles illustrate the conservation process and describe practical and theoretical issues facing the preservation of our cultural heritage. Each installment also contains a Technical Bulletin prepared by one of our staff conservators, which delves in-depth into a topic of importance to museum professionals and others working with cultural objects.
There are a lot of different places you could find articles about artist's materials in scientific journals, so you might best off starting with an interdisciplinary science database to search for articles on your particular topic. You could also try one of the more comprehensive chemistry databases like SciFinder-n or Reaxys when you want to dive deeper into the technical literature (see Article Databases box to the left).
Alternatively, you could search for a particular technical topic in an art focused database.
BCIN, The Bibliographic Database of The Conservation Information Network
The main resource for locating scholarship on the conservation, preservation and restoration of cultural property.
Content type: Abstracts of scholarly articles and books
If you are interested in a particular topic, the best tool to use is an abstracting and indexing database such as:
Web of Science
Interdisciplinary database covering a broad range of subject areas. One feature of this database is cited reference searching. A cited reference search starts with a known item and moves forward in time, potentially guiding you through the evolution of a concept in the literature of one or more fields.
PubMed
PubMed is a database created by the National Library of Medicine and is good for finding medically orientated articles on diet, nutrition, nutraceuticals. toxicity and other food science topics.
When searching for a topic, remember that everyone may not use the same terminology. Take Vitamin E as an example. This substance goes by many different names: tocopherol, Alfacol, and even [(2R)-2,5,7,8-tetramethyl-2-[(4R,8R)-4,8,12-trimethyltridecyl]-3,4-dihydrochromen-6-yl] acetate. Likewise scientific concepts may go by different terms: heart attack or myocardial infarction. You may need to consider synonyms, especially if you are having a hard time finding any information at all. And remember, you can always call on your friendly librarian for searching advice!