What Is Peer Review?

Peer reviewed journals are also called scholarly, academic, or refereed journals. Articles in these journals are written by scholars or professionals who are experts in their fields. Before these articles can be published, however, they must be submitted to peer reviewed or scholarly journals for consideration. The articles are first reviewed internally by the editorial staff of the publication, and if the editor or staff believes that the article meets the publication's high standard of scholarship, accuracy, and reliability, a panel of the author's peers, also experts in the field, will then be asked to review the article. Each reviewer evaluates the article by asking themselves questions like the following to judge the quality and significance of the research: What is this research about? Is it important? Is the methodology sound? Are the conclusions logical? Are the findings original? Was the literature review thorough? Does the article make a significant contribution to the scholarship of the field? Does it meet the scope of this particular journal? Based on the answers to these questions, the reviewers will each decide whether or not they believe the article is worthy of publication in the journal. They will make their recommendation to the editor to either approve the article for publication for reject it. This part of the process is called the external review. The editor of the journal makes the final determination, of course, and may very well require that the author make revisions to the article before it is published. Many scholarly journals have high rejection rates.

At this time, peer-reviewed journal literature is still considered the highest form of scholarship. More importantly, your professors will likely say that they want you to use at least some peer-reviewed articles in your paper. Please look at the Finding Peer-Reviewed Articles tab above to start searching for your peer-reviewed articles!

Scholarly vs. Popular - What's the difference?

Scholarly Journals vs. Popular Magazines: What's the difference?

SCHOLARLY	POPULAR
Bibliographies or list of references are included	Usually DO NOT have bibliographies or lists of references
Authors are experts	Authors are often generalists
Articles are signed by the authors	Articles are sometimes unsigned
Audience is the scholarly reader such as professors, researchers, students	Audience is the general population
Standardized formats are usually followed, such as APA, MLA, etc.	Use various formats, which are often unstructured
Written in the jargon of the field	Written for anyone to understand
Any illustrations support the text, such as maps, tables, photographs	Often profusely illustrated for marketing appeal
Journal may have a serious, somber appearance, with few bright colors	May have a bright, attractive cover, with many glossy pictures

Anatomy of a Scholarly Article

The Librarians at North Carolina State University Libraries have provided us with a graphic example of the anatomy of a peer reviewed article. Click on the image to check it out!