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Library DIY

I Am Looking For Peer Reviewed Articles

A peer-reviewed article has been reviewed by other experts or scholars in the field for quality and originality. To determine if an article is peer-reviewed: 

Learn more about the journal your article was published in.

  • If you are in a database, clicking on the journal title may give you more information about the journal.
     
  • Google the title of the journal and look for an editorial policy page or a page for authors. This will tell you whether the journal uses a peer review process.
     
  • Search for the journal title in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory. This iconreferee shirt means the journal is "refereed," or peer-reviewed.

Last resort: In many databases you can limit your search to only peer-reviewed articles. (This is not ideal, since it will remove some relevant items, such as peer-reviewed book articles. It may also mis-identify some articles as peer-reviewed when they are not, for example commentary in a peer-reviewed journal.) 

  • Look for a checkbox that limits a search to scholarly (peer-reviewed) articles (either on the first search page or on the results page),
     
  • Search in a database or journal that only contains peer-reviewed articles. (Read about the database or journal to identify the nature of its publications.)

 

Video on the Peer-Review Process (FAU Libraries):