Q. What is a peer reviewed journal? How do I know when I find one?

At its core, a peer-reviewed journal is a periodical in which all of the articles are critically analyzed by experts in that discipline before being considered for publication. Other characteristics of a peer-reviewed journal (also referred to as Refereed, Scholarly, Academic) are that it contains original research by experts in a field, written for other experts or students, and cites previous research extensively. 

Most of the library's databases have a check box to make it easy to search for only "peer-reviewed" articles. It will look something like this:

Please note: There are many academic and scholarly journals that do not contain peer-reviewed articles. Using the scholarly articles filter will give you a list of academic journal articles that are peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed. You must do the extra step of researching your specific journal to determine if it's peer-reviewed. 

Still unsure? You can check to see if a journal uses peer review by searching the Ulrichsweb database (access Ulrichsweb through Databases A-Z):

1. Make sure you search by the journal title, not your article.
2. Look for the peer review icon    in the list of journals OR
3. Limit to Refereed / Peer-reviewed from the Narrow Results column.

Related info:​

• Evaluating Sources: How to Verify a Journal is Peer-Reviewed
• How do I find only peer-reviewed articles for an assignment?

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