Peer Review and Primary Literature: An Introduction: Finding Peer-Reviewed Articles

The terms "Academic," "Scholarly," "Peer-Reviewed" and "Refereed" are often used interchangeably.  However, while all peer-reviewed Journals ARE scholarly/academic, NOT ALL academic or scholarly journals are peer-reviewed or refereed!  As discussed in the previous tab, "Peer Review" is something quite specific.  A journal in a particular field may be written for academic use but the editorial process for selecting articles may not include peer review. 

So, how do you determine whether a journal is peer-reviewed?  One way is to let the database help you select such journals.  Many of our databases will have a specific check-box for limiting your results to only peer-reviewed material.  Also, a few databases like BioOne should only contain peer-reviewed journals.  Most general databases include journals (peer-reviewed and not) as well as other non-peer-reviewed materials like magazines, newspapers, conference papers, book chapters and reports.  Here are some tips for limiting to peer reviewed in two major database vendor products:

EbscoHost Databases (This tip should work for any EbscoHost file, but this example is taken from Academic Search Complete):

In the Advanced Search options, simply check off the "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" box below the search box(es) before you do your search to eliminate anything that is not defined by Ebsco as a Peer-Reviewed Journal:

After you have searched and gotten results, you can filter to peer-reviewed material by checking off that "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" box in the left frame:

 Gale Databases (This tip should apply to most Gale academic databases, but this example is taken from Academic OneFile):

When you do a search in Academic OneFile, the results may or may not already be selected on the "Academic Journals" filter. Before you can get the option to narrow to "only peer-reviewed" content, you must select the "Academic Journals" content filter. After you have filtered your results to "Academic Journals", you will see the "only peer-reviewed" option, as indicated below. Click the box next to that option to filter out any material that has not gone through the peer-review process.

Additional Ways to Determine if a Journal is Peer-Reviewed

•  The webpage for a journal may state this fact.  For example, the homepage for the journal  includes a statement in the first paragraph that it is "an open-access peer-reviewed journal that aims to foster communication between experimental and theoretical work on the one hand and historical, conceptual and interdisciplinary writings across the whole range of the biological and human sciences on the other."

IMPORTANT NOTE:  When an instructor says that you must use Peer-Reviewed Literature, he or she may also mean that the articles must be "Research Articles" or "Primary Articles."  If this is the case, then extra care must be taken in judging the articles you retrieve.  A peer-reviewed or refereed journal usually contains content besides original research articles.  This additional content may include letters, editorials, commentary, book reviews and more.  Generally, your professor does NOT WANT YOU TO USE THIS CONTENT.  They want you to use "primary" literature.  Look at the next tabbed page for more on this.