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Finding peer reviewed articles is something you might be asked to do. Or the identification might be for scholarly articles.
On this page you will find a tutorial that covers how to identify if an article is peer reviewed and some tips on finding them.
A simple explanation is that before an article is accepted for publication, it is evaluated by experts in the field (peers). This process may catch errors or poor research methods. An author must make corrections suggested by reviewers in order to get published. It is a type of quality control.
In some databases an article will have an obvious label. Sometimes you can use filters to narrow down the results to peer reviewed only. At times, you might have to do a few extra steps but if you need help, please ask me.
Scholarly vs Non-scholarly
| Scholarly | Non-Scholarly |
|---|---|
| academic or peer reviewed journals | includes magazines and newspapers |
| written by scholars, researchers | written by journalists |
| for academics, researchers, experts | for general audience |
| lengthy and uses discipline/field vocabulary | shorter/few pages, plain language |
| includes references/bibliography | doesn't include full list of sources/references |
| often includes charts, graphs or diagrams | often has advertisements, photographs or illustrations |