Throughout your academic careers, instructors will ask you to find scholarly or peer-reviewed articles. Understanding what peer review means, why it’s important in academic research, and how to identify peer-reviewed sources will be essential skills for conducting college-level research.
Peer review is the evaluation of an article by experts in the field to ensure its validity, worth, and suitability for publication in an academic journal. This is a crucial part of the academic research process designed to help maintain the quality and reliability of research published within a specific discipline. You might also come across a journal labeled as “refereed.” Refereed and peer reviewed are synonymous terms in this context and should be understood as the same procedure.
When a scholar has finished writing an article and is looking to get it published in an academic journal, they must begin an involved, and at times lengthy, procedure. Look over this infographic to understand the stages of the peer review process:
For researchers such as yourself, acquiring peer-reviewed articles means that you can be certain that the articles you are reading are significant to the field and safe to include in your own research. The peer review process is not perfect, and it doesn’t mean that there cannot be issues that arise. However, it does serve a vital role within academic research and is something you should become accustomed to.
Now that we have discussed what peer review is and why it is important, the next step is to discuss how to check if an article has been peer-reviewed. To do so, you should focus on the journal that the article has been published in. It is standard for academic journals to clearly identify themselves as a peer-reviewed journal, which means that any article published in it will have gone through the appropriate procedure discussed above. Some journals do include additional writings that are not peer-reviewed. Items such as book reviews, editorials, or letters to the editor are understood as distinct from standard scholarly articles and do not follow the same procedure.
There are several different ways to check if a journal and its articles have been peer-reviewed:
Library Search and Database Indicators
The Thomas Library search will feature an icon indicating a journal’s peer-reviewed status. Under “Availability” you can also limit your search to only include peer-reviewed journals. The same is true for many databases, such as Academic Search Complete. Please note, however, that sometimes this information is not accurate. It is possible to find an article that has not been marked as peer-reviewed in the system when the article, in actuality, been peer-reviewed; the system is just missing that information. It is important to be diligent!
In addition, many research databases only index (include) peer-reviewed journals. This is true for the Web of Science Core Collection and non-primary source materials on JSTOR for instance.
Journal Website Verification
If you are unsure if a journal is peer-reviewed, you can also try finding the website for the journal in question. Generally googling the journal's full name will quickly provide you with the correct link. Journals will frequently identify themselves as peer reviewed (or refereed) on their homepage or in their “About” section.
Having a clear understanding of the peer review process and why it is important for academic research are crucial skills for students to develop throughout their academic career. While not every assignment will require the use of peer-reviewed sources, make sure you read over your assignment descriptions carefully and be sure you are selecting appropriate sources.