- Colorado State University Libraries
- Research Guides
- LIFE212-Introductory Cell Biology Laboratory (Rosenberg)
- Is this journal peer reviewed?
LIFE212-Introductory Cell Biology Laboratory (Rosenberg)
Peer-Review / Refereed / Scholarly / Academic
What are "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed" articles?
Peer-reviewed, refereed, scholarly, and academic are all terms that describe journal articles (and sometimes books!) that have been reviewed and edited by experts in the discipline.*
- Journal articles written by experts, faculty, or scholars on the topic
- The information has been evaluated by editors or other experts
- Articles most always contain a bibliography documenting sources
*"Scholarly" and "Academic" are terms that are sometimes applied to articles that are not peer-reviewed, but they usually are.
Is this journal Scholarly/Peer Reviewed?
If you want to check to see if the journal is scholarly or peer-reviewed, search the journal title in Ulrich's Periodicals Directory.
Question: Is Ecology a scholarly/peer reviewed journal?
Look it up in Ulrich's and this is what you find...
Answer: Yes, Ecology is a refereed journal.
Primary Research Articles
Primary research articles are articles discussing original research done by the authors of the article. These types of articles have the following characteristics:
- Introduction
- A research question or a hypothesis/hypotheses will be stated in this section.
- Methods/Methodology/Materials
- This section will discuss the research population, the sample sizes, the experimental methods and research procedure, etc.
- Note - sometimes these sections are under a larger "Experimental" section
- Results
- This is where the data from the experiment/research will be found. Most of the graphs and charts are also in the section. This is where the actual results from the research is found, often in great detail.
- Discussion
- This section is where the authors talk about their results. It isn't as data heavy and discusses things that worked, things that didn't' work, possible conclusions that could be drawn from the data, etc.
Here is an example of a primary research article.
Some examples of articles that are NOT primary research articles (even if they are peer-reviewed) include: Literature reviews, Meta-Analyses or Systematic Reviews, Letters to the editor, Book chapters, Book reviews, Editorials, General/Reference/Encyclopedia articles, Interviews, etc.
Videos about Peer-Review
Want more information? Below are a few short videos that may be beneficial to watch.
The Peer Review Process [1:56]
How to Tell if an Article is Peer Reviewed [1:38]
Peer Review in 3 Minutes [3:15]
This video is often shown in CO150
Ask a Librarian
Ask Us About:
- Finding articles, books, & more
- Using library resources
- Citing your sources