Biology

What is Peer Review?

Peer review, also called refereeing, is a prepublication process used by most scholarly journals. Before an article is accepted for publication, the editors will send the manuscript to outside experts for review. The reviewers will then provide feedback on the quality of the research in the paper. The author can usually make revisions and resubmit the work for final acceptance.

Why do I care if an article is peer-reviewed?

Peer-reviewed articles are the gold standard for academic research. For students, it means that other experts have read and approved the methods and conclusions of the work, providing extra authority to the piece.

How do I find peer-reviewed articles?

Use subject databases that specialize in the field, which are more likely to include peer-reviewed journals. Many databases also include a "peer-reviewed articles only" checkbox.

Written by Paige Dhyne. https://libguides.furman.edu/bio222/peer-review

Checklist to Determine if a Resource Is Scholarly:

• Author is an accredited scholar, and almost always has an advanced degree, usually a Ph. D. 
• Author usually is associated with an academic or research institution, which is reflected in the author's byline, bio, and e-mail address.
• Author always cites, that is, identifies in detail, his, or her, sources so that you can look them up.  (In this way, a scholarly resource can help a lot with your own research.)
• Author's sources are scholarly.
• Resource in question is substantial in length; in the case of an article (as opposed to a book), you are looking at 10, 15, 20, or more pages of content.
• If the resource is a journal article, especially in the sciences or social sciences (as opposed to the humanities), it is likely to follow this format: Abstract (or summary), literature review, methodology, results, and conclusion plus footnotes, endnotes, and, or, bibliography (that is, list of works cited).
• If the resource is an article, it is very likely to appear in a peer-reviewed journal.  Peer-reviewed means that the article has been subjected to thorough review (and editing) by the author's peers, that is, by other accredited scholars, in the given academic field.  The reviewers oftentimes are members of the journal's editorial staff.  Not all scholarly articles appear in journals that are peer-reviewed.
• As a secondary characteristic, the scholarly resource typically appears with zero or minimal advertising.

Enter your search in Wofford OneSearch.  In this example, let us search for "wildfires" AND "climate change" AND "California" as keywords:

This search produces 14,000+ results.  They include multiple Resource Types--books, articles, reports, videos, and more.  But with the Availability filter, you can limit the results to articles in Scholarly & Peer-Reviewed Journals.  After selecting that filter, click on Search:

Your results now consist exclusively of Scholarly and Peer-Reviewed journal articles:

If, instead of using Wofford OneSearch, you decide to use a database, say, Academic Search Complete, you will find that the database also allows you to limit the results of your search to Scholarly & Peer-Reviewed journal articles:

Your results in the database reflect the Scholarly and Peer-Reviewed limit you applied: