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Unit 6: Search Tools: Subscription Databases
Lesson 6: Search Hints: Peer Reviewed Journals
Limiting your search to peer reviewed journals will seriously limit your results. Journals that are officially “peer reviewed” follow a very specific, rigorous review process. Yet all journals that are scholarly are peer reviewed, or examined by scholars in the appropriate fields before publication. Scholarly journals are a type of periodical—materials regularly published in many editions over time—devoted to research in a particular field of study.
A better option is to limit your search, if possible, to periodicals or journals within the publication type field, and then use your judgment to discern which articles among your search results are scholarly. Most databases also allow you to click on the linked publication title to learn whether the journal is scholarly or not.