Peer-Reviewed Journals

One of the easiest ways to insure that you are using scholarly sources is to look for journals that are "peer-reviewed". The terms "peer-review" or "refereed" refer to a journal's policy of having experts or a review board critique an article before publishing it. Peer-review insures that journal articles are considered valid contributions by scholars in a specific field.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

One of the easiest ways to insure that you are using scholarly sources is to look for journals that are "peer-reviewed". The terms "peer-review" or "refereed" refer to a journal's policy of having experts or a review board critique an article before publishing it. Peer-review insures that journal articles are considered valid contributions by scholars in a specific field.

Your professor may ask you to use only peer-reviewed journals in researching and writing your paper. You can determine if a journal is peer-reviewed/refereed by searching the journal title in Ulrich's Periodical Directory.

Some of the Research Databases subscribed to by the library allow the user to limit a search for articles contained only in scholarly, academic, or peer-reviewed journals. Visit this page to see how.

These pages were written by Glenn Remelts. and edited by Jeffrey L. Nyhoff and Nancy Zylstra
©2005 Calvin University (formerly Calvin College), All Rights Reserved

If you encounter technical errors, contact computing@calvin.edu.