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Some scholarly sources undergo a peer-review process before being published. While these sources are still considered scholarly sources, sometimes people refer to them more specifically as peer-reviewed sources. So a peer-reviewed source is a special type of scholarly source that's undergone peer review.
What is 'peer-review' and how does it work?
What is 'peer-review' and how does it work?
Peer-review is a process that's been put into place to increase the chances that published information (and scholarly information in particular) will be high-quality and factually-accurate. Here's how it works. When scholars conduct research, they write up the results of their research – usually in the form of a journal article, conference paper, or a book. At this point, what they've written is referred to as a manuscript. Then, they submit their manuscript to a journal or book publisher, hoping it'll get published. An editor at the publishing company will receive the submitted manuscript and then identify a few experts who conduct research in the same discipline as the author of the manuscript. These experts are considered peers of the author. The editor will send the manuscript to those peers and ask them to review it. They'll weigh in on whether research looks like it was conducted well, and whether the results and conclusions of the research seem robust.
Peer-reviewers might also look at the importance and utility of the research, the quality of the authors' writing, and they might look for and correct grammatical mistakes. If the peers are satisfied with the manuscript, they'll recommend to the editor that it get published. Otherwise they'll let the editor know they think the manuscript should be rejected and not published.
QUESTION 1. The function of peer-reviewers is to:
A. check that the authors of the submitted manuscript all have a PhD degree.
B. check that the authors of the submitted manuscript have included information about their funding sources.
C. check that the research described in the submitted manuscript was funded by a government agency.
D. check that the research described in the submitted manuscript is well-planned and well-conducted.
(Answer at bottom of page.)Which types of scholarly sources are peer-reviewed and how can you tell?
Which types of scholarly sources are peer-reviewed and how can you tell?
Journal articles undergo a peer-review process before being published. If you want to make absolutely sure that a particular journal article is peer-reviewed, you have to investigate whether the journal it was published in utilizes a peer-review process.
To do that, search the journal's title in Google to find its website. Once there, you might find information about whether it's a peer-reviewed journal right on the homepage. Or you may have to poke around a bit and look for links that lead to instructions on how to submit manuscripts to that journal. Within those instructions, there's usually information about the peer review process that submitted manuscripts will undergo, thus confirming the journal has a peer-review process in place.
Or, try a Google search on the title of the journal and the words peer-review or peer-reviewed. Often you'll find a promising result that tells you whether the journal is peer-reviewed.
For example, to the right you see a couple of results for a Google search on the journal title Music Theory Spectrum along with the words peer review. You can see evidence for peer-review (circled in red) in the snippets of the two Google results shown.
Some conference papers are peer-reviewed. You can look for information about the peer-review process on the conference publisher's website, but you may not find anything. If you don't, that doesn't mean the conference paper was not peer-reviewed. It may just be that the publisher hasn't bothered to indicate one way or another.
Scholarly books might be either peer-reviewed or editorially reviewed (or both). Like conference papers, you can look for peer-review information on the book publisher's website, but you may not find anything. Again, that doesn't mean the book was not peer-reviewed.
Really, it's only journal articles for which peer-review is both a standard procedure as well as fairly easy to verify – and this is why you might encounter some people who consider journal articles to be the only type of source that's peer-reviewed. They're not – they're just the only type of source that consistently uses peer-review as an editorial process and for which information about the peer-review process is fairly transparent and easy to confirm.
QUESTION 2. You can usually find information about whether a journal is peer-reviewed on a journal's website. When you find the journal's website, look for links with names like these and then peruse for information about a peer-review process:
About this journal
Journal information
Instructions for authors
Author guidelines
Try it! Do a Google search on the journal African Studies by entering this search: African Studies journal. You should be able to easily find the website for it. This journal is published by a scholarly publisher called Taylor & Francis. Now poke around and see which links lead you to information about the peer-review process for articles submitted to this journal. What are they? (TWO of the options below are correct, two are not.)
A. About this journal > Aims and scope
B. Submit an article > Instructions for authors
C. About this journal > Open access
D. About this journal > Editorial board
(Answer at bottom of page.)QUESTION 3. Now try checking for evidence that a journal is peer-reviewed using a slightly different strategy. This time you'll check to see if Journal of Rural Studies is peer-reviewed. Copy and paste this search into Google to see what evidence you find: Journal of Rural Studies peer reviewed.
Do you see evidence that it is a peer-reviewed journal?
yes
no
A more in-depth look at journal articles and the peer-review process:
A more in-depth look at journal articles and the peer-review process:
To get the big picture on how peer-review fits into the journal article publication process, take a look at the diagram to the right.
This diagram also sheds light on WHY the peer-review process is so important. As you can see from the diagram, researchers consult and use information from previously published articles to guide and inform their current and upcoming research projects. If those previously published articles contain wrong information, they'll be designing their new projects on a flawed, weak foundation.
So, it's really important for the information in published articles to be right, not wrong. The peer-review process helps to ensure that only articles with high-quality, accurate information get published.
However, the peer-review process is not foolproof. Mistakes are made, peer-reviewers fail to catch those mistakes, and flawed research results still get published, unfortunately.
FYI - Any journal that has a peer-review process in place is called a peer-reviewed journal. Every once in a while, you'll hear peer-reviewed sources / peer-reviewed journals called refereed sources / refereed journals. Why? Peer-reviewers are sometimes called referees since they function much like a referee in sports.
QUESTION 4. After a journal article is published, information about that article will be added to various article databases thus making the article "findable" by anyone who wants to consult it.
true
false
Not ALL content in a peer-reviewed journal has been through the peer-review process.
Not ALL content in a peer-reviewed journal has been through the peer-review process.
Isn't it a drag when there are exceptions to things?
It turns out that some peer-reviewed journals contain a mix of content including editorials, letters to the editor, opinions, book reviews, and obituaries – in addition to articles about research. All that other content is NOT peer-reviewed. It's only the articles that are peer-reviewed, because they contain research results. As you learned above, it's especially important for published research results to be accurate, which is why this content undergoes peer-review, but not other content.
QUESTION 5. If you were told to find and use scholarly sources for an assignment, then journal articles would qualify, since they are a peer-reviewed source, which is a type of scholarly source.
true
false
What's next?
What's next?
Answers to questions on this page:Question 1. DQuestion 2. A and BQuestion 3. yesQuestion 4. trueQuestion 5. true
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