Evaluating Books, Scholarly & Non-Scholarly, Journals, Articles, Websites

What is peer-reviewed?

In academic publishing, the goal of peer review is to assess the quality of articles submitted for publication in a scholarly journal. Before an article is deemed appropriate to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, it must undergo a rigorous process.

Essential Details

The aim of peer review is to assess the quality of articles submitted for publication in a scholarly journal. Before an article is deemed appropriate to  publish in a peer-reviewed journal, it must undergo the following process:

•  The author of the article must submit it to the journal editor who forwards the article to experts in the field. Because the reviewers specialize in the same scholarly area as the author, they are considered the author’s peers (hence “peer review”).

•  These impartial reviewers are charged with carefully evaluating the quality of the submitted manuscript.

•  The peer reviewers check the manuscript for accuracy and assess the validity of the research methodology and procedures.

•  If appropriate, they suggest revisions. If they find the article lacking in scholarly validity and rigor, they reject it.

Because a peer-reviewed journal will not publish articles that fail to meet the standards established for a given discipline, peer-reviewed articles that are accepted for publication exemplify the best research practices in a field.

Peer Review in 3 Minutes

Peer Review produced by Pfau Library, explains the process of peer review. 

Investigating Journals for Peer-Review

You cannot rely on the title of the journal to know if it is peer-reviewed.  However, you can take the journal title and search the Internet to find the publishers site and details of the journal.

For example:

You are using an article from the Canadian Journal of Nursing Research.  Search the Internet for the journal and open the publisher's website.

Some publishers provide details on the landing page for the journal; however, others direct you to an independent journal homepage.   It is your responsibility  to explore the publisher's website to find out if the journal is peer-reviewed.

How do I find peer-reviewed articles?

Answer these questions to determine if the article is peer-reviewed:

• Is there an abstract?
• Does the article have footnotes or in-text citations?
• Is there a reference list at the end of the article?
• Are the author's credentials listed?

The article may be divided into sections:

• Introduction
• Theory
• Methods
• Discussion
• Literature Review
• Results
• Conclusion

Be careful!  A peer-reviewed journal may have non-peer reviewed articles which are generally editorials, brief news items, or short communications.  Use the criteria noted above to ensure the article you are reading is peer-reviewed.

Use the features available on the database interface to limit your results to scholarly or peer-reviewed.