Stepping Outside Traditional Scholarship - Sources to Consider
Finding books on your topic is one way to circumvent academic journal gatekeeping. Since book publishing does not rely on peer review, it gives marginalized folks a chance to share new, challenging, and critical ideas, data, and arguments. It is always worth a search in the library catalog to see what is out there on your topic. Remember, scholarly articles are not the only resource worth citing.
There are several avenues worth exploring to get at research that is not represented in our databases due to privilege in publishing. Open Access Journals can be a really great resource. Open Access (OA) Publishing is free and allows access to anyone. This means research is not hidden behind and expensive pay wall. Keep in mind that not every Open Access Journal is on the up and up. There are scams and shoddy research/reviews that get published in some OA journals. But there are ways for you to evaluate those OA journals
Another avenue is to find scholarly blogs. Oftentimes professors and researchers are talking about their work on blog sites. Just like with any other resource, you will need to evaluate the blog to see if it is credible or not. Here is a website to help you do that
Lastly, you can incorporate zines into your research. While you might not be able to cite them in your work (ask your professor), you can certainly read zines for background information and for that invaluable first-hand account. Primary sources (folks writing about a topic that they are directly affected by) gives a voice to your research.