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Scholarly vs. Non-Scholarly Periodicals: Finding Peer Reviewed Articles

Your prof wants scholarly stuff right? Here's how to recognize it, find it, and use it when you see it.

Where to look

Scholarly articles may be located in multidisciplinary databases.  You may narrow searches to peer reviewed academic journals.

 Look in our general databases:

Academic Search

Research Library

OmniFIle

Be sure to check some of our SUBJECT SPECIFIC databases listed under "Find Articles" on the Library Web page.

Evaluate Citations

Evaluating Information from a Citation

First, make sure you are looking at the most detailed version of the citation/ abstract that is available to you.

Then dig for specifics:

  • Author. Can you determine the author’s affiliation or credentials? Is the author from a university or research organization?
  • Publication date.  When was this published?  Is currency important for your topic?
  • Length.  How long is the article?  2-3 pages does not provide in-depth coverage and is not likely to be a peer-reviewed, research article.
  • Abstract.  Is there an abstract?  Reading an abstract takes much less time than skimming the whole article – use it to help decide if this article will be useful!
  • Peer-review.  Is the article from a peer-reviewed (sometimes called “refereed”) journal?

Sample article record from one of the library databases:

You will notice that the author is from an educational institution; the article was published in August 2009; it has 19 cited references; and the article is 11 pages long. In addition, even though this article was published in August 2009, it has already served as a source for another article, as designated by "Times Cited in this Database."

To ensure that the journal is peer-reviewed, you read more about it on the journal publisher’s website or ask a librarian! 

How to search

For a New Search: For an Existing Search:
  1. Using Academic Search, enter your keywords in the search boxes.
  2. Scroll down to the "Limit Your Results" section of the screen, and tick the box labeled "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals."
  3. Then click the "Search" button.
  4. Your search results will be limited to articles that are considered scholarly. 
  1. If you've already done an article search in Academic Search, and want to limit your existing results to scholarly articles, 
  2. Look in the "Refine Your Results" area to the left of your results, and tick the "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" box there,
  3. Then click on the "Update" button.
  4. Your new results are now limited to articles that are considered scholarly.

Most of the article databases available at Kinlaw Library provide a way to limit search results to peer-reviewed publications. Look for a checkbox or drop-down menu item that says one of the following:

  • Academic
  • Scholarly
  • Peer-Reviewed
  • Refereed
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