You’ve probably heard from your instructor that you need to use peer-reviewed sources* for your research. What does peer-review mean? In academic journals, research articles are submitted by a researcher, reviewed by the journal editor, and then reviewed for accuracy and originality by other researchers in the same field (i.e. the author’s peers) before they are published.
The main purpose of a scholarly journal article is to report on original research or experimentation in order to make such information available to the rest of the scholarly world. Since an article is rigorously reviewed by the journal’s editors and other experts in the field before it is accepted for publication, the information is generally considered to be accurate. However, the system isn’t perfect and sometimes inaccurate information gets published– when that happens, the journal will issue a retraction or correction.
Some characteristics of scholarly or peer-reviewed articles:
- Written by a scholar or expert in the field
- Usually cite sources in the form of footnotes or bibliographies
- Language is typically that of the discipline covered (i.e. lots of jargon and acronyms)
- Usually assume that the reader has some prior knowledge of the topic or problem
This video from KULibraries (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) will help you visualize the peer-review process.
*We use the terms peer-reviewed article, scholarly article, and academic article interchangeably throughout this tutorial.