Conducting a Literature Review

If an article is peer reviewed, it was reviewed by scholars who are experts in related academic or professional fields before it was published. Those scholars assessed the quality of the article's research, as well as its overall contribution to the literature in their field. 

When we talk about peer-reviewed journals, we're referring to journals that use a peer-review process.

Related terms you might hear include: 

• Academic: Intended for academic use, or an academic audience. 
• Scholarly: Intended for scholarly use, or a scholarly audience. 
• Refereed: Refers to a specific kind of peer-review process. 

National University Library System. (2018). "Find Articles: How to Find Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Articles". Retrieved from: http://nu.libguides.com/articles/PR.

Even if an article was published in a peer-reviewed journal, it may not necessarily be peer-reviewed itself. For example, a commentary article may undergo editorial review instead, meaning it was only reviewed by the journal editor.

There are some clues you can look for to help you identify if an article is peer-reviewed:

• Does the abstract discuss the author's/authors' research process?
• Does the abstract include a variation of the phrase "This study..."?
• Is there a Methodology or Data header in the text of the article?
• Does the paper discuss related research in a literature review?
• Is there an analysis of a need for further research or gaps in the literature?
• Are the references for scholarly articles and books?

If an article published in a verified peer-reviewed journal includes these elements, it is most likely a peer-reviewed article.

You can access a printable checklist of these items here.

In many scholarly databases, there is an option to limit results to only those that are peer-reviewed. See this example from the Advanced Search page of an EBSCOhost database.