What are some good, readily accessible peer-reviewed journals on obscure issues (particularly scientific and environmental ones)?

Use Lexus Nexus to search your topic… several peer reviewed articles will come up. Look for the common publishers of those articles. Talk to a librarian (preferable one on a university campus) to assist you with locating publishers of peer reviewed articles in your area of expertise. They can do all this work for you in about one tenth of the time it will take you.

Also… a quick cheater path is to use Google Scholar and see what common journals come up. Not nearly as thorough as other academic search engines, but great for what you are seeking.

If you are a student you should have access to the school’s databases. If not, visit a local university and use the computers there. You should find some good stuff that way. Lexis Nexis is a good source along with Jstor, Academic Search Premier, and maybe CQ Researcher. Google Scholar is a good place to start, but you’ll probably have to pay for access to most of the articles that come up.

I have LexisNexis, but my issue with it is that it primarily turns up news results. While they have some great information, it doesn’t really fit the source standards I’m working around. =\

You can set LexisNexis to only return peer reviewed articles in the search. Have you tried that?

You should be asking these questions to one of your school librarians. Also, find out if they have JStor, that’s another good database for journal articles.