Peer-reviewed journals are scholarly journals that use a process called "peer review" to determine what will and will not be published in the journal. In general, this process engages other scholars in the field to evaluate the quality of the author's research and presentation before the article is accepted for publication. Peer review helps to maintain high standards of published material in the field. 

Articles in some scholarly and professional journals are not peer-reviewed, but are selected by an editor or board.  Standards of scholarship in such journals are often equal or comparable to those of peer-reviewed publications, although this is not always the case.

Finding Peer-Reviewed Journals and Journal Articles

There is no comprehensive source for identifying all peer-reviewed journals.

• To determine if a particular journal is peer-reviewed, refer to the journal itself (either to an individual issue of the journal or to the publisher's web site). Look at the journal's editorial statements and/or instructions to authors.


• Some databases also give you an option to limit your search to peer-reviewed articles only. Some of the databases with this feature are: Academic Search Premier; Business Source Premier; CINAHL; Health Business; HealthSource: Nursing/Academic Edition; MasterFILE Premier; Professional Development Collection; PsychINFO; SocINDEX; SPORTDiscus.
   
• Some databases provide a list of publications indexed in the database with information about each publisher and whether the journal is peer reviewed.