Ulrich's periodical directory is a tool that allows you to check if the journal in which an article is published is peer-reviewed.  This is important as your instructors will often insist that you use peer-reviewed journals.

Peer-reviewed journals are reviewed by a committee of peers (other researchers in the field). Content is approved by the committee before it is published.

• Peer review is the process by which colleagues critically appraise each other's work.
• When the manuscript of an article is submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, independent experts are asked to read and comment on the manuscript. If approved by the reviewers, the manuscript is accepted for publication as an article in the journal.
• The peer review process is applied to both primary articles (i.e. articles which present findings from original research) and to review articles that summarize primary research.
• The purpose of peer review is to ensure a high level of scholarship and to improve the quality and readability of the manuscript.

How do you know if the articles in a journal are peer-reviewed? Go here: http://guides.library.utoronto.ca/peer-review.

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.

1. Type the JOURNAL TITLE (not the article title) into the search box, and click the green search button.

2. In the search results, look for a referee jersey icon to indicate that a journal is refereed, which is a synonym for peer-reviewed.

3. Or you can click on a journal to see the full record. If it says Refereed Yes, then you know the journal (and the articles published in it) are refereed/peer-reviewed.

 4. The Journal of Infectious Diseases IS peer reviewed.