What is Peer Review?
Peer review is the process through which professional abstracts, proposals, grants, manuscripts, and practice are examined by a team of qualified reviewers who determine the quality of the work product in relation to current knowledge in that field (Smith, 2006; Southgate et al., 2001). Peer reviewed journals will not publish articles that do not meet strict publication standards. As such, peer reviewed articles are considered scholarly and represent best research practices.
How Can You Determine if an Article is Peer Reviewed?
There are several ways you can determine if an article is peer reviewed.
- Limit a database search to peer-reviewed journals only.
- Examine the publication to see if it is peer-reviewed. Sometimes the information about peer reviewed status can be found in the heading of the journal article, the masthead of the publication, or the about section (located at the journal issue level).
- Search the journal by name online to learn more about the specific publication. Be sure to use only the official journal website when searching.
The Peer Review Process
Locating Peer Reviewed Articles
Using a McKee Library database, such as Academic Search Complete, you can locate peer reviewed articles using the search limiters. There are two ways to do this in the databases.
