Peer Review: Is this Article Peer Reviewed?

Peer Review or Refereed journal articles

These are scholarly articles that have been reviewed by a panel of experts in the same field as the author(s). The author's identity is generally hidden from the reviewers. Refereed and Peer Reviewed mean the same thing.

The process of peer review for academic or scientific journal articles can be quick, for example 4-6 weeks, or it can be several steps and take many months.

step 1. An author, or the lead author among the group of authors will submit a manuscript to a journal according to the journal editors specifications. 

step 2. The journal editor sends the manuscript to a group of peer reviewers who are experts in the area of the manuscript. 

step 3. The reviewers read the manuscript and decide whether to accept the article for publication in the journal, reject the article, or send the article back with a request for changes to the manuscript. If the manuscript is sent back, the process begins again. 

The purpose of peer review is to ensure that only the best research is published in a journal. 

In most articles, the words "peer reviewed" will not appear on the article.  However, if you see a line similar to
"received 11/1/2019, accepted 1/17/2020"
the dates most likely refer to when the article was submitted for review and when it was accepted for publication. This indicates a peer-reviewed article.

The masthead page of of the journal website will often contain information about publication requirements and the editorial process that manuscripts undergo [example].

Limiting to Peer Reviewed articles in a Database

When you are searching in a library database for articles, there will often be search options to limit what you find to peer reviewed or scholarly articles (like the two options pictured below). If you that box, your search results will then be limited to articles from peer-reviewed journals*.

Be aware that sometimes you will still have things in your results that are not research articles, like book reviews and letters to the editor that appear in peer reviewed journals.
  

*Be sure to use the Scholarly Article Checklist to evaluate the articles you find.

The following list of databases are just a few of the hundreds of article database resources available at Booth. You will find peer reviewed articles in every one of the list below. Select the database most appropriate for your subject area. If you don't see that here, perform a general article search from the library home page, or choose a database by subject.