Q. How do I know if an article or journal is peer-reviewed?

You can ensure that you’re using peer-reviewed resources in 3 ways:

1. Limit your database search to Peer-reviewed or Scholarly (peer-reviewed) either before you search or after you have the search results.
2. Check Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory
3. Check the submission guidelines on the journal’s official website.

For details about how to use any of these methods, see this guide: How do I know if an article is peer-reviewed.

What does peer-reviewed mean anyway?

When your professor tells you to use peer-reviewed articles or peer-reviewed journals, they want you to use articles from scholarly journals that review submissions before publication. In the peer-review process, an author sends a manuscript of their article to the journal. The journal editor(s) send the manuscript to other experts in the author’s field (i.e. their peers) and ask for comments. Based on the comments, the journal editors either accept the article, reject it, or accept it with conditions. If the article is accepted with conditions, the author can revise it based on the reviewers’ comments and resubmit it. The intent is to ensure quality. Sometimes the term “refereed” Is used in place of “peer-reviewed”