Peer-Reviewed
What does peer-reviewed mean in context to journal articles? Peer-review is a process that many scholarly journals undertake to evaluate the quality of the material being submitted. When an article is submitted to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, several impartial reviewers (who are experts in the subject matter) assess for accuracy, and the validity of the research methodology and procedure.
Peer-Reviewed Article FAQ
- Peer-Reviewed Article FAQIncludes a definition and characteristics of a peer-reviewed article with an example.
Finding Peer-Reviewed Articles
Electronic articles can be searched through our databases. There are some general databases and some subject specific databases. To access the databases, click on the database tab on the library homepage. You can then browse through them alphabetically, or browse by discipline (i.e., philosophy, history, mathematics, etc.)
If you find an article that is not accessible through our library, you can use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to request it from another library.
Below you will find a list of databases that will be helpful for your assigned papers. It is not an exhaustive list, but it is a good place to start.
- Academic OneFile This link opens in a new windowProvides over 54,000,000 articles, most full-text, from about 13,000 scholarly journals across most academic subject areas. Coverage is from 1980 to the present.
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowFull text for about 8,500 periodicals including over 7,300 peer-reviewed journals across most areas of academic study as well as indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 magazines and journals. Coverage is from 1887 to the present.
- Communications and Mass Media Collection This link opens in a new windowMore than 100 journals focused on all aspects of the communications field. Key subjects covered include: advertising and public relations, literature and writing, and linguistics.
- Google ScholarIncludes most peer-reviewed online journals from the largest scholarly publishers as well as scholarly books and non-peer reviewed journals. Links to full-text due to Milne Library subscriptions. A useful feature is the ability to see who cited an article.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowFull-text access to over 1400 core scholarly journals and e-books across most subject areas.
Can be used for course content: Titles from many university presses and other academic publishers. - Religion and Philosophy Collection This link opens in a new windowDatabase for theology and philosophy research that includes hundreds of full-text journals and magazines covering many religious and philosophical topics, including world religions, religious history, political philosophy and philosophy of language.
Boolean Operators
Boolean operators are words or symbols that are used in conjunction with words to refine searches.
Here are six helpful ones to use:
- AND - narrows
- Ex: ADHD and boys (this narrows down our results to only include ADHD and boys)
- NOT - excludes
- Ex: ADHD not boys (this narrows down our results to include things about ADHD excluding those that mention boys)
- OR - expands
- Ex: boys or males or guy (this expands our our search to search for multiple possible terms)
- * - expands
- Ex: rac* (using the asterisk in replace of an ending on a word will expand your search to include results that have any ending on the base word.)
- " " - exact phrase
- Ex: "executive functioning" (this pulls up results that are stated in the item exactly as written)
- ( ) - confine
- Ex: (ADHD or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder) AND (boys or guys or males) - (this will instruct the database or search engine on what parts go together in your search phrase