Peer review is a process by which articles are evaluated by other expert scholars prior to publication. The experts critically assess the article for rigor and scientific merit. Once an article passes through this process, it is published in a journal. Journals that require this process prior to publication are considered peer-reviewed.
The benefit of using peer-reviewed literature is knowing that the research is of high quality and credibility.
Peer review is sometimes referred to as "refereed".
What is the difference between peer review and scholarly? Both peer review and scholarly are written by experts in the field of study. The difference is that peer review goes through additional scrutiny when it is reviewed by other scholars.
Watch this short (5 minute) video tutorial on how to find and identify peer-reviewed articles or view the written step-by-step tutorial below.
Peer-reviewed journal articles can be found in academic databases. Some academic databases are open access, meaning on the open web and accessible to anyone, while others are subscription-based and only available through a library.
Open access databases such as PubMed, PLOS ONE, and ScienceOpen contain primarily peer-reviewed journals. There is no limiter for peer review in these databases. You can use filters to eliminate editorials, book reviews, and letters. Most of the remaining results will be peer-reviewed articles.
Subscription databases such as EBSCOhost's Academic Search Complete, Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source, and CINAHL with Full Text contain peer-reviewed journals. These databases have filters to eliminate results that are not peer-reviewed.
To find peer-reviewed journals in these databases, use a search limiter to identify Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals results.
If you forget to select the limiter before your search, you can filter the results using the search limiter for "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" which is in the left menu on the search result screen.
If you need to identify whether a journal is peer-reviewed, you can search for the title in the database.
Click on Publications and search for the title of the journal. The publication details will indicate the peer-reviewed status at the bottom of the entry, indicated here.
You can also look up the journal in the NLM Catalog: Journals referenced in the NCBI Databases or in Google and follow the link to the journal website to determine if it is peer-reviewed. Look in the About section of the website for any mention of the words peer review or refereed.
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