Peer-Reviewed Sources: A Sequenced Tutorial

The Peer Review Process

What is peer review?

• The author sends their paper to a journal for approval
• The journal sends the paper to other experts in the field to read and review
• Reviewers can recommend that the journal publish the paper as-is, publish it with edits, or not publish it at all
• The journal sends the paper back to the author if it needs editing
• The author chooses whether to incorporate the suggested changes and may respond to reviewers’ comments
• The process repeats until the paper is accepted to publish

Peer-Reviewed Articles

What does a peer-reviewed article look like?

• Published in a peer-reviewed journal
• Published with a summary (abstract)
• May feature a note on when the paper was submitted/accepted
• Like other scholarly works, full of source citations
• Papers in the sciences usually have discrete sections (“methodology”, “results”, etc.), graphs, charts or figures; humanities papers usually do not
• Author’s credentials are usually listed
• Substantial bibliography/works cited list

Peer-Reviewed Journals

What does a peer-reviewed journal look like?

• Peer-reviewed journals usually tell you that they’re peer-reviewed
  • Mentioned in the front or back matter in a physical journal
  • Mentioned in the journal information or submission guideline pages in an online journal
• Some databases indicate which journals are peer-reviewed
• Periodical directories like Ulrich’s track which publications are peer-reviewed

Non-Peer-Reviewed Sources

What should I avoid when looking for peer-reviewed material?

• Newspaper articles
• Magazine articles
• Ads or other sponsored material
• Book reviews
• Editorials or opinion pieces
• Conference proceedings

Locating Peer-Reviewed Articles

How and where should I look for peer-reviewed articles?

• Library OneSearch
  • Databases with scholarly/peer review filters
• Scholarly and peer review filter
  • Most EBSCOhost databases
  • Many Gale databases
• Some ProQuest databases