Peer reviewed journals, also called refereed journals, are journals that require that all submitted article manuscripts are read and edited by a team of subject experts before accepting the articles for publication. These experts check the article to ensure that the information is supported by the research that was carried out. After reviewing the article, the team then recommends that the article be published, rejected, or revised and resubmitted. All articles accepted for publication are expected to meet certain levels of standards within the field of study.
Not all items included in a peer reviewed journal will have undergone the peer review process. Things like letters to the editor, book reviews, and occasionally articles selected by an editor will not be peer reviewed but are still published in the peer reviewed journal. This can be an issue when searching for articles in databases, because despite limiting to retrieve only peer reviewed articles, all items published in a journal with a peer review process will display in the results list. In general it is safe to assume that all research articles in a peer reviewed journal have been been peer reviewed but that editorial pieces and book reviews never undergo a peer review process.
Please note that dissertations are not peer reviewed.
Thanks to the University of St Francis
How do you know if the articles in a journal are peer-reviewed? Some databases allow you to limit to peer-reviewed articles. For other databases, you need to look up the title of the journal in Ulrich's Periodical Directory.
Note: Refereed is a synonym for peer-reviewed. Ulrich's uses the term refereed.
Getting Started: Search the title of the journal, NOT the article title. For example, examine the citation below. You would search Sociology Compass, the title of the journal, to establish if this article is peer-reviewed.
1. Open Ulrich's Periodical Directory.
2. Type the JOURNAL TITLE (not the article title) into the search box, and click the green search button. For example, examine the citation below. You would search Sociology Compass, the title of the journal, to establish if this article is peer-reviewed.
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