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 at least 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 two databases in this list (ProQuest Research Library and Academic OneFile (Gale)) 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.

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, but they apply this designation 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?

Questions? Ask Us! (see links on the right under More Help)