How to Know if It Is a Peer Reviewed Article

How to recognize peer-reviewed (refereed) journals

In many cases professors will require that students utilize articles from "peer-reviewed" journals. Sometimes the phrases "refereed journals" or "scholarly journals" are used to describe the same type of journals. But what are peer-reviewed (or refereed or scholarly) journal manufactures, and why do kinesthesia crave their use?

3 categories of information resources:

• Newspapers and magazines containing news - Manufactures are written by reporters who may or may non be experts in the field of the article. Consequently, articles may contain incorrect information.
• Journals containing articles written past academics and/or professionals — Although the articles are written by "experts," any particular "skillful" may have some ideas that are actually "out there!"
• Peer-reviewed (refereed or scholarly) journals - Articles are written by experts and are reviewed by several other experts in the field before the article is published in the journal in social club to ensure the commodity'southward quality. (The article is more than likely to be scientifically valid, reach reasonable conclusions, etc.) In nigh cases the reviewers do not know who the author of the article is, and so that the article succeeds or fails on its own merit, not the reputation of the expert.

Helpful hint!

Not all data in a peer-reviewed periodical is really refereed, or reviewed. For case, editorials, letters to the editor, book reviews, and other types of information don't count as articles, and may not exist accepted past your professor.

How do you make up one's mind whether an article qualifies as beingness a peer-reviewed journal article?

Get-go, you demand to exist able to identify which journals are peer-reviewed. There are generally four methods for doing this

1. Limiting a database search to peer-reviewed journals only.
   Some databases allow yous to limit searches for articles to peer reviewed journals just. For example, Academic Search Complete has this characteristic on the initial search screen - click on the pertinent box to limit the search. In some databases yous may have to go to an "advanced" or "expert" search screen to do this. Call back, many databases do not allow y'all to limit your search in this way.
2. Checking in the database Ulrichsweb.com to determine if the periodical is indicated as being peer-reviewed.
   If you cannot limit your initial search to peer-reviewed journals, you will need to check to encounter if the source of an article is a peer-reviewed journal. This tin can be done past searching the database Ulrichsweb.com. Go to the alphabetical listing of databases and click on the "U". Select Ulrichsweb.com. It helps to type in the exact title of the source journal including whatsoever initial A, AN, or THE in the title. If you don't find the journal you lot are interested in, you lot may want to utilise Method 3 below. If your periodical title IS displayed, check to see if the journal is indicated as being refereed by having the symbol adjacent to the title.
3. Examining the publication to see if information technology is peer-reviewed.
   If by using the outset 2 methods y'all were unable to identify if a journal (and an commodity therein) is peer-reviewed, you may then need to examine the periodical physically or expect at additional pages of the journal online to determine if it is peer-reviewed. This method is non always successful with resources available only online. The following steps are suggested:
   1. Locate the periodical in the Library or online, then identify the almost current entire year's bug.
   2. Locate the masthead of the publication. This oftentimes consists of a box towards either the front or the end of the periodical, and contains publication data such as the editors of the periodical, the publisher, the place of publication, the subscription cost and like information.
   3. Does the periodical say that it is peer-reviewed? If then, you're done! If not, move on to step d.
   4. Bank check in and around the masthead to locate the method for submitting articles to the publication.  If you find information like to "to submit articles, send three copies…", the journal is probably peer-reviewed. In this case, you are inferring that the publication is then going to send the multiple copies of the article to the journal's reviewers. This may not always be the instance, so relying upon this criterion alone may prove inaccurate.
   5. If you lot exercise not see this blazon of statement in the get-go consequence of the journal that y'all expect at, examine the remaining journals to run across if this data is included. Sometimes publications will include this information in just a unmarried issue a year.
   6. Is it scholarly, using technical terminology? Does the commodity format approximate the following - abstract, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion, and references? Are the articles written by scholarly researchers in the field that the periodical pertains to? Is advertising non-existent, or kept to a minimum? Are there references listed in footnotes or bibliographies? If yous answered yes to all these questions , the journal may very well be peer-reviewed. This determination would be strengthened past having met the previous criterion of a multiple-copies submission requirement. If you answered these questions no, the journal is probably not peer-reviewed.
4. Notice the official web site on the net, and bank check to see if it states that the journal is peer-reviewed. Exist careful to use the official site (often located at the periodical publisher'due south web site), and, even then, information could potentially be "inaccurate."

Helpful hint!

If y'all take used the previous four methods in trying to make up one's mind if an article is from a peer-reviewed journal and are still unsure, speak to your instructor.

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Source: https://www.angelo.edu/library/handouts/peerrev.php

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