Help: Guide to Peer Reviewed (Refereed) Journals
Abstract: Find out what "peer reviewed" means, and how to use library resources to locate peer reviewed journals and articles.
How to Find Out if it's Peer Reviewed | Limiting to Peer Reviewed Sources
How Do I Find Out if a Journal is Peer Reviewed?
In a peer reviewed journal (also known as refereed) drafts of articles are critically assessed by other scholars in the author's field or specialty before they are accepted for publication. Peer review is the accepted method for ensuring that information is of the highest quality.
Just because a journal is peer reviewed does not guarantee that all articles in it are included in the peer review process. Some article types, such as news items, editorials and book and article reviews, may not be peer reviewed.
To find out if a journal is peer reviewed/refereed, use Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory. For example, you can use the advanced search to look for journals on particular subjects that are also refereed:
- From the Ulrichsweb homepage, click on the "Advanced Search" link to the right of the search box.
- Under "Limit Your Results," click on "More Limiters".
- Scroll down and check "Refereed / Peer-reviewed" under "Key Feature".
Or, look for "Refereed - Yes" in the basic description for a journal:
Limiting to Peer Reviewed Sources in Databases
Some of the library's article databases allow you to limit your search results to peer reviewed articles only:
- In Academic Search Complete from EBSCOhost, you can check a box to limit results to articles from peer reviewed journals. (For a listing of all EBSCOhost databases available to the NAU community, see the menu.)
- In ProQuest databases like Environmental Sciences & Pollution Management, a check box to limit to "Peer reviewed" sources appears right under the search box. (For a listing of all available ProQuest databases, see the menu.)
Remember that not all articles or items that are published in a peer reviewed journals (editorials, reviews, letters, etc.) will necessarily have gone through the peer review process.
You can check the help screens of other databases to find out if limiting by peer review is available and how to use this function.
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This page last modified
August 22, 2011
