How to Find Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Peer-Reviewed Journals

A peer-reviewed journal is a scholarly periodical (often called "academic") which requires that each article submitted for publication be judged by an independent panel of experts (scholarly or scientific peers). Here are some other characteristics of scholarly, peer-reviewed, or refereed journals:

• Sources are cited with footnotes or a bibliography at the end of the article
• Authors are scholars and researchers in the field and are identified as such
• Purpose of the article is to publish the results of research
• Publisher may be a professional organization, research institution; usually not-for-profit
• Very little advertising
• Graphics are usually statistical illustrations, in black-and-white

How do you find these articles?

When searching full-text article databases, a search can be limited to peer-reviewed/scholarly publications simply by checking a box on the search screen.

How to Limit your search

Here is a step-by-step approach to limit a search to only peer-reviewed journals. This method will work for most of the library's article databases, though the steps might be slightly different, depending on the interface of the database you're searching.

1. Go to Find Articles > Search Databases by Subject.
   
2. Choose a database (listed alphabetically) and log in.
3. Type in your search terms.
4. Check the box that says “peer reviewed” to limit the results to academic articles.
5. Hit search and explore your results.

Example from Academic Search Premier database: