What is peer-review?
What is peer-review, and why does it matter?
Peer-reviewed information resources - such as scholarly articles and monographs (books) - reflect an author's expertise and validated credibility. Put simply, peer-review is the rigorous evaluation of one's research/work (such as your professor's research) by one or more people who possess similar knowledge and expertise. These are called peers, hence the term peer-review. Research in scholarly disciplines, such as film and media studies, are a discursive practice where ideas are formulated, debated, and weighed against one another over extended periods of time. These ideas and arguments are reviewed by communities of experts before they are published in academic journals or by book publishers, such as university presses.
If you learn better by absorbing quick videos that explain large concepts with visuals and narrative, check out this fun 3-minute video demystifying the peer review process!
Scholarship, at its core, is simply a conversation:
When you begin reading a scholarly article or book chapter, what you are doing is entering into an ongoing scholarly conversation (and not a finished one). It might feel overwhelming and complex as a novice scholar, but you can position yourself as a contributor to this dialogue rather than remaining a consumer of it! Seeking out these conversations taking place in your research area, citing the work of experts in your own writing, and recognizing that a given scholarly work in itself may not represent the only perspective on the issue are all good starting points. This is especially important to consider as you look for resources and pay attention to things like when the work was published, as theories, methods, and world-views evolve over time.
Example of a Peer-Reviewed Academic Journal
Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. It publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, arts and natural sciences.
Example of Scholarly Article in that journal:
Vaccari, Cristian, and Andrew Chadwick. “Deepfakes and Disinformation: Exploring the Impact of Synthetic Political Video on Deception, Uncertainty, and Trust in News.” Social Media + Society 6.1 (2020).
