Finding out if an Article or Journal is Peer Reviewed

You may be required to use scholarly, peer-reviewed or refereed journal articles in your assignments. These are reliable sources of information appropriate for academic writing.

Definition

Peer reviewed / refereed: Articles published in peer-reviewed or refereed journals have been through a formal approval process. An editor and one or more subject specialists reviews the article before it is accepted for publication. This process is intended to ensure that the article is accurate, well-researched, and contributes to the body of knowledge in the field.

Scholarly: Scholarly articles report on research, and will normally:

be peer reviewed or refereed
may start with a brief abstract describing the content of the article
cite their sources in list of references or footnotes
list the credentials or institution of the author(s)
use specialised language that assumes the reader will have some knowledge of the subject
describe the methods in any research
be published by an academic institution, professional association, research organisation or scholarly publisher.

Some Library databases such as EBSCOhost include an option of limiting your search to scholarly or peer reviewed articles, while others such as A+ Education [Informit] and PsycINFO include this information in the database record. ie:

A+ Education: in the NT (notes) field, eg NT: Refereed article
PsycINFO: in [ ] after the title in the search results list, eg [Peer Reviewed Journal], or in the Publication type field, eg Publication Type; Peer Reviewed Journal.

Having found an article(s) on your topic that is not clearly identified as scholarly or peer reviewed you can check further using:

Ulrich’s Periodicals Online

Select the Ulrich’s Periodicals Online database from the list of CSU Library Databases - U.
Use the Quick Search option, type in the name of the journal in which your article was published and click on Submit.
Locate the journal in the Search Results list.
Refereed items are marked with an icon.
Clicking on the title of the journal will also provide you with a full description of the journal, including details such as document type (eg academic/scholarly journal, newsletter/bulletin, newspaper, trade journal, magazine), a description of the coverage of the journal and a link to the publishers' Web site.

Publisher information

A journal’s homepage will generally contain information about the scope or aims of a journal; its editorial board; or instructions to authors that may indicate whether or not articles are reviewed before they are printed.

You can locate the journal’s home page via Ulrich’s (as described above). Once you have found the journal you are looking for, click on the journal title for additional details and then click on the hypertext link at the URL field to link through to the journal’s home page.

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