Peer Review
What do we mean when we talk about the peer review process?
Research articles that have been published in scholarly journals must pass a quality test called peer review.
- A scholar (expert) writes an article to report their research and findings.
- The article uses the language or jargon of that field of study; Other researchers are the primary audience or readers.
- The author submits the draft article to an academic/scholarly journal in their field of study.
- If the journal’s editor decides that the article is a good fit for their journal, they pass it along to a group of experts (peers or referees) to evaluate the article's quality, in a process called "peer review."
- If the reviewers recommend the article for publication, they may also request certain revisions. The editor gets the final say.
- It can take months or years between the draft article and publication!
Note: Other words used to describe such peer-reviewed articles include Scholarly, Academic, and Refereed.
Peer review in 3 minutes
- Peer Review in 3 minutes (transcript) Video transcript in plain text format. Opens up in a new window
How do I spot a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article?
How do I spot a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article?
To start to identify scholarly articles sometimes called peer-reviewed articles in scholarly or research journals, look for these characteristics:
- An abstract (a one paragraph summary of the article at the beginning)
- Written by an authority or expert in the field (author affiliations, credentials, & place of work are usually listed on first page)
- Titles of scholarly journals are more likely to contain the words like "Journal", "Review", "Bulletin", or "Research" than publications produced for a general audience
- Articles themselves are usually lengthy with a narrow or specific subject focus. For example:
- Narrow: "The impact of 'stop-go' demand management policy on Britain's consumer durables industries, 1952-65"
- General: "British history
- Contains original research, experimentation, or in-depth studies in the field/subject discipline (determining this point requires - at minimum - reading the abstract!)
- May have sections describing methodology used to conduct the research
- Language used in the article includes specialized terms and the jargon of the subject discipline/field.That shows it is written for researchers, professors, or students in the field
- Usually a formal appearance and - in some fields/subject disciplines - the presence of tables, graphs, and diagrams
- Advertising is minimal or none (Don't dwell on this point. This characteristic was easier to identify when periodicals/journals were available solely in print. Electronic access typically eliminates the advertisements from the library databases!)
- Reviewed by other experts from the subject discipline/field before publication (peer-reviewed or refereed)
- A list of citations to articles, books, and other sources at the end of the article. Also called literature cited, bibliography, or references depending on the journal's field/subject discipline.
Where can you find these articles? (EBSCO)
If you need scholarly, peer-reviewed articles, it helps to know where to look! Some databases (like those produced by EBSCO) have an easy-to-find checkbox to limit your search to peer reviewed articles. The checkbox option is super quick and convenient! It does not, however, distinguish between types of content within a journal. These are a few EBSCO database examples:
- Academic Search Complete EBSCO This link opens in a new windowProvides a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals - of which more than 7,300 are peer-reviewed journals.
- ERIC Education Resources EBSCO This link opens in a new windowERIC, the Education Resource Information Center, provides access to education journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, dissertations & theses, and books.
- SocINDEX Full Text EBSCO This link opens in a new windowProvides more than 860 full-text titles including core sociology peer-reviewed journals.
- Search OWL (Oakton's Whole Library)
Via this link you can search for books, news articles, and academic articles. It casts a very wide net so you'll have to narrow your search quite a bit. After you enter the initial search, you can filter (limit) your results to peer-reviewed journals. NOTE: You will sometimes hear people call this Oakton's Library Catalog.
When you find a relevant article for your topic . . .
If you are using an EBSCO database, here's another way to determine whether the article you found comes from a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal.
- To check, click Source on the article's record, then check the Publication Details.
- Look for Yes or No in the section labeled Peer Reviewed.
- Click on this sample EBSCO record image to see a larger version =>
Which one of these articles is from a peer-reviewed journal?
Hantke, Steffen. “Rebellion of the German Seniors: Demographic Dystopia as ‘Event Television.’” Journal of Popular Film & Television, vol. 39, no. 4, Dec. 2011, pp. 193–200. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2010.541953.
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Brandt, Alyssa. “I Have Questions for Chatgpt.” New Yorker, vol. 99, no. 4, Mar. 2023, p. 27. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,shib&db=a9h&AN=162225314&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
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