Peer-Review or Scholarly, Refereed or Academic. What do all of these terms have in common? Well, they mean the same thing - they refer to articles or scholarly publications that usually represent original research and have gone through a rigorous process of acceptance into the scholarly conversation. This rigorous review process means that a group of the author's scholarly peers, usually experts in the field and area of research, have critically analyzed the research methods, presentation, and background knowledge and deemed it relevant enough, timely, significant and appropriate to add to the scholarly conversation through publication in a specific journal.
Peer-Reviewed Article Characteristics:
Identifying Peer-Reviewed Journals:
Finding peer-reviewed journals can be a great way to locate peer-reviewed resources, but be careful as many peer-reviewed or refereed journals also publish content that has not undergone the rigorous peer review process, such as:
Peer-reviewed or refereed articles are, for the most part, research articles presenting primary research findings. Some databases will have a selection box somewhere on the search screen to limit your search to peer-reviewed articles.
Academic Search Complete Example:
