How can I tell if an item is peer reviewed?
Answer
Most items provided by the library will fall under this category. If you want to be certain there are a few tell-tale signs:
- Citations
- If the article or book contains citations to other works. The author needs to show their peers they understand where their research fits into the larger conversation about that topic.
- Authors
- The authors of peer reviewed items will be professionals in their fields, often working at colleges/universities or government departments. The items they publish will make note of where they work.
- Language
- Usually, peer reviewed items, since they were written by professionals for other professionals in their fields will use their language. This could mean more complicated sentences and word choices. The opposite would be something like a newspaper article, that is meant to be understood by as many people as possible, so the structure and word-choice are simpler.
- Publication
- Where is the item published. Peer-reviewed articles are published in scholarly journals. These journals typically only contain articles: no advertisements or pictures.
- Books will often be published by a university press. They can also have several authors, and have an editor listed on the cover. The commissioning editor's job is another type of scholarly work: they seek out research on a topic and combine the disparate authors' work into a single book (or series of books).
Below is an example of a standard looking, peer reviewed journal article.
