Peer-reviewed articles are useful in research writing because they give meaningful answers to research questions and help writers draw conclusions based on objective, sensible, and professionally executed experimentation. But how do you tell if an article is peer reviewed?
You can tell if an article is peer-reviewed by asking your librarian for help. You can also search online databases such as JSTOR and EBSCO host academic libraries. Some online databases allow you to limit your search to specific types of journals, making it easy to find peer-reviewed articles.
Since peer-reviewed articles provide a form of scientific communication based on the foundation of trust, they’ll help you to establish the validity of your research based on expert knowledge. Given that a board of editors analyzes these articles in-depth before approval, it’s highly unlikely to find falsified work within an area of study.
As a student doing a research paper assignment, peer-reviewed articles can give you valuable information that you can use to make your research more comprehensive and authentic before submission.
In this guide, we’ll expand on how to tell if an article is peer-reviewed to make it easy for you to identify the right journal articles for your research work.
Categories of Information Resources
Before you can tell if an article has been through a peer review, you need to learn about the categories of information resources you’ll come across during your research. Generally, you can get information from three sources: newspapers and magazines, journal articles, peer-reviewed articles.
Newspapers and Magazines
Newspapers and magazines contain information written by reporters who either are experts in the field of study under investigation or know nothing at all about the subject. Notably, information published in newspapers and magazines may contain incorrect information.
Journals
Journals contain information written by experts in the field. However, note that many of the experts may not provide solid or sufficient information on the subject, which means that their research may be lacking in some way.
Peer-reviewed Journals (Articles)
Sometimes referred to as refereed or scholarly journals, peer-reviewed articles refer to academic work written by experts and reviewed by other experts in the field before publishing. Given the thorough review process these articles go through before publishing, they’re more than likely to be scientifically valid with reasonable conclusion.
Experts who review these articles don’t often know who the author is. With this respect, the article can be a success or failure based on its own merit, not the reputation of the original writer.
What Are The Qualities Of Peer-reviewed Articles
Before you learn how to tell if an article is peer-reviewed, it’s important to look at the characteristics of journals professors consider scholarly.
More often than not, peer-reviewed articles are ones that has:
- Author’s details: A peer-reviewed article usually has detail about the author at the end of the article of in the footer of the first page.
- A bibliography: A bibliography is a reference list at the end of the article that gives more details about the content in the article.
- Length: One or two page articles in journal databases can be helpful for research, but it’s highly unlikely that they’re scholarly. While longer won’t always mean better, lengthy articles are more often than not scholarly and therefore possibly peer-reviewed.
- Charts, graph, and tables: These elements show the method used to calculate results or demonstrate the results of a study.
Also, a peer-reviewed article may include parenthetical references and footnote, not to mention it might include the basic outline of a research paper.
Keep in mind
2 Ways to Check If an Article Is Peer Reviewed
Now that you know the possible characteristics of peer reviewed articles, it’s time to look at the possible ways to tell if an article in question has been through a peer-review.
Here are some possible options:
1. Talk to Your Librarian
Your school library probably has hundreds of books to reference in your area of study. There’s an online portal, which gives you instant access to journal articles that you can use for reference in your research work if asked to.
The problem is:
You can’t easily tell if an article from the online database has been through peer-review, especially if it’s a PDF file.
In such a case, your best bet to tell if a particular article is peer-reviewed would be to ask your librarian for help.
2. Search Journal Databases Online
There are times when your librarian won’t be available to help. In such a case, it’s important that you search the journal databases online for peer-reviewed articles.
Here’s how this works:
- Go to a relevant journal-listing site.
- Look for the journal’s title to find its location.
- Find the database with the article’s full text by following the link
- Scroll down to the bottom of the article to check if it’s peer-reviewed.
The above steps may take some of your research time, but it’s the only best shot you have to determine if a piece of article you’re looking at has been through peer-review.
There’s also an easy way to get around this if you don’t want to search multiple databases in one sitting. You can:
- Search databases by EBSCO host: It’s easy to look up for peer-reviewed articles from databases provided by EBSCO host. Navigate to their academic libraries, search for an article, and scroll further down to check if that particular article is peer reviewed.
- Search JSTOR: The articles you’ll find on JSTOR are peer-reviewed, so this should be a great place to start if you want to access these types of journals fast.
Some online databases allow you to search for an article by title with the “Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed)” option checked. This, too, is a quick way to tell if an article has been through the review process.
Other databases allow you to limit your search to academic journals, scholarly articles, or peer-reviewed articles. Such are the databases to use if you wish to get fast access by means of limit your search to a specific criterion.