Articles in peer-reviewed journals are reviewed by a group of the writer's peers (aka other academics in his/her field) before the articles are published. A scholarly journal is a journal that has been peer reviewed.

For print journals:

• On the inside of the cover or on the first page or two, the peer review process will be outlined by the publisher, or go to the journal's website and look at the article submission guidelines to determine if the journal has a peer review process.

For an e-journal or any publication you are not sure about:

• Use Ulrichsweb  to determine if the journal is peer-reviewed or refereed. After you have typed in the name of the journal, if you see this symbol[refereed] you will know the journal has been peer reviewed.

In the example shown below, both the online and print versions of Earth Sciences History are peer-reviewed, while Earth Sciences is not.

Journal Citation Reports lists the impact factors of journals from science and social science disciplines. It provides access to the following metrics:

• Impact Factor: the frequency with which an "average article" in a journal has been cited in a given year; evaluative measure of a journal's relative importance.
• Immediacy Index: how quickly articles in a journal are cited  (Immediacy Index tutorial)
• Article Influence Score: average influence, per article, of the papers in a journal (more info)
• Eigenfactor Score: measure of the journal's total importance to the scientific community (more info)
• Journal Self Cites: contribution of journal self cites to its Impact Factor