Do-It-Yourself Library: Peer-Reviewed Articles

A peer-reviewed article has been reviewed by other experts or scholars in the field for quality and originality. To determine if an article is peer-reviewed:

Learn more about the journal your article was published in.

• If you are in a database, clicking on the journal title may give you more information about the journal.
• Google the title of the journal and look for an editorial policy page or a page for authors. This will tell you whether the journal uses a peer review process.
• Search for the journal title in Ulrich's Global Serials Directory. This icon means the journal is "refereed," or peer-reviewed.

In many databases you can limit your search to only peer-reviewed articles. (This is not ideal, since it will remove some relevant items, such as peer-reviewed book articles.) 

• Look for a checkbox that limits a search to scholarly (peer-reviewed) articles (either on the first search page or on the results page),
• Search in a database or journal that only contains peer-reviewed articles. (Read about the database or journal to identify the nature of its publications.)

Here is a video on the Peer-Review Process