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Research Tutorial

Checking for Peer-Review

A work can be scholarly but not peer-reviewed. If your instructor asks for peer-reviewed articles make sure they are actually peer-reviewed. 

A journal's website will tell you if the journal is peer-reviewed. If the homepage does not clearly indicate if it is a peer-reviewed publication, look for an 'Authors' or 'Manuscript Submission' section. These sections gives information for people submitting articles for publication, and if the journal is peer-reviewed it will be outlined in this section. 

Example 1: Criminology & Criminal Justice - https://journals.sagepub.com/home/crj - peer-reviewed Check Mark

  • The journal homepage clearly shows this journal is peer-reviewed

Example 2: Emergency Medicine Journal - https://emj.bmj.com/ - peer-reviewed Check Mark

  • Although harder to find, under the 'Author' section there are details about the journal's peer-review process

Example 3: Elder Law Studies E-Journal - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/sample_issues/1311441_CMBO.html#advisbd - peer-reviewed X icon

  • The authors for each article are scholars, but the journal itself does not follow a peer-review process. This journal is academic, not peer-reviewed. 

Activity: Is this Source Peer-Reviewed?

This activity gives you a chance to practice figuring out whether a journal is peer-reviewed or not.

Instructions

  • Looking at the image below, click on the places on the webpage where you could find out whether this journal is peer-reviewed. You can click on any part of the image.
  • There are 4 correct answers.
    • If you have clicked on a place where you could find evidence that this journal is peer-reviewed, you will see a check mark. Check Mark
    • If you have clicked on a place where you could not find evidence that this journal is peer-reviewed, you will see an X. X icon

If you would like to explore the live webpage, see here: Journal of Emergency Management.

When you have completed the activity, you can move to Module 7: Academic Integrity and Citations

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Unless otherwise noted, this guide is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License).