Peer-Reviewed Sources: A Sequenced Tutorial
This comprehensive tutorial provides detailed information about the peer review process and what kinds of peer review sources are available for researchers' use. Click any of the titles on the left side to explore that specific content, or click here to be taken to the tutorial's homepage.
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The Peer Review Process
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What is peer review?
- The author sends their paper to a journal for approval
- The journal sends the paper to other experts in the field to read and review
- Reviewers can recommend that the journal publish the paper as-is, publish it with edits, or not publish it at all
- The journal sends the paper back to the author if it needs editing
- The author chooses whether to incorporate the suggested changes and may respond to reviewers’ comments
- The process repeats until the paper is accepted to publish
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Peer-Reviewed Articles
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What does a peer-reviewed article look like?
- Published in a peer-reviewed journal
- Published with a summary (abstract)
- May feature a note on when the paper was submitted/accepted
- Like other scholarly works, full of source citations
- Papers in the sciences usually have discrete sections (“methodology”, “results”, etc.), graphs, charts or figures; humanities papers usually do not
- Author’s credentials are usually listed
- Substantial bibliography/works cited list
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Peer-Reviewed Journals
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What does a peer-reviewed journal look like?
- Peer-reviewed journals usually tell you that they’re peer reviewed
- Mentioned in the front or back matter in a physical journal
- Mentioned in the journal information or submission guideline pages in an online journal
- Some databases indicate which journals are peer reviewed
- Periodical directories like Ulrich’s track which publications are peer reviewed
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Non-Peer-Reviewed Sources
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What should I avoid when looking for peer-reviewed material?
- Newspaper articles
- Magazine articles
- Ads or other sponsored material
- Book reviews
- Editorials or opinion pieces
- Conference proceedings
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Locating Peer-Reviewed Articles
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How and where should I look for peer reviewed articles?
- Library OneSearch
- Databases with scholarly/peer review filters
- Scholarly and peer review filter
- Most EBSCOhost databases
- Many Gale databases
- Some ProQuest databases
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