Library - Frequently Asked Questions

How can I make sure I'm finding peer-reviewed/scholarly articles?

Peer-reviewed articles are often the best sources of information for research (although there are exceptions), and your teacher will probably ask you to use some peer-reviewed articles when writing your paper. The best way to ensure you are finding peer-reviewed articles is to search for articles using one of the library’s academic journal databases, found under the “Articles” link on the library’s homepage. The top 3 databases in this list (ProQuest Research Library, JSTOR and Gale Academic OneFile) contain the most peer-reviewed articles. Once you’re inside the database, look for a check box on the main search page that says “Peer Reviewed” or “Scholarly” and click it. This will ensure that all the results you get are from peer-reviewed journals. A screenshot of the "peer-reviewed" checkbox option is shown below.

Note: Most journal articles on JSTOR are peer reviewed, there is no check box for peer reviewed.

One important thing to watch out for: when you search a database like ProQuest Research Library and you click the "peer-reviewed" option, you are finding content from journals that the database has designated as peer-reviewed. This designation is applied at the journal level, not at the article level. As a result, non-peer-reviewed items may still show up in the results list, if they are present in a journal which is mostly peer-reviewed (see the FAQ question “What does peer-reviewed mean?” for more information about non-peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals).

Screen shot of ProQuest Research Library database

Screenshot of Gale Academic OneFile database

Tags: research, articles, peer-reviewed, scholarly, search strategies, databases, online resources

See also: “What does peer-reviewed mean?

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