Many learners contact the library asking how to find peer reviewed articles or how to determine if an article they found is from a peer reviewed journal.
What is “peer review?” From the library’s PDF guide What are Peer-reviewed Articles & How do I Find Them? Peer Review is defined as
“…a process where an article goes through critical evaluation by subject experts (usually “peer” faculty members). The article is evaluated on its research methodology, literature review, discussion, results and conclusions before it is published. If an article does not meet the criteria, it will not be published. Peer reviewed articles are considered the “gold standard” in academic publishing. Articles may also be called scholarly, refereed or juried.”
Library databases allow you to limit your search to only feature articles from peer reviewed journals. This peer review video tutorial not only goes into a bit more detail about the peer review process, but it shows you how to limit your results to peer reviewed journals when searching library databases.
Perhaps you found an article from a reference list or some other means and you’d like to know if the article is from a peer reviewed journal. One of our library databases, Ulrichsweb (located on Databases A-Z page), allows you to search by journal title and discover if the journal is peer reviewed.
Ulrichsweb uses the term refereed when referring to peer reviewed journals. As mentioned above in the definition, “refereed” is used interchangeably with “peer reviewed” and refers to the same process of review by a panel of scholars.
This 1 page guide will show you how to determine the peer reviewed/refereed status of a periodical: Ulrichsweb User Guide.
-Sommer
Sue Story | 26-Jun-08 at 9:17 pm | Permalink
Here is an interesting article I found on Wikihow.
Evaluating the Credibility of a source:
http://www.wikihow.com/Evaluate-the-Credibility-of-a-Source
My favorite part was one of the tips:
The more radical the ideas presented in the source (in comparison to other sources on the same subject) the more carefully you should scrutinize it.[1] Don’t dismiss it completely; Gregor Mendel’s work was cited only three times, criticized, and ignored for 35 years before his discoveries in genetics were recognized in the field of science.[3]
I think of alot of the current health scares when I read this.