Scholarly articles (also known as academic articles) are written by experts in a discipline for other experts in that field. They're usually published by a professional association or academic press. Their content focuses on research, has citations (like a bibliography or footnotes), and are professional in appearance with no spelling or grammatical errors, advertisements, or unrelated images.
Some scholarly articles go a bit further to be peer-reviewed. All peer-reviewed articles are scholarly articles, but not all scholarly articles are peer-reviewed.
NOTE: An article can be from a peer reviewed journal and not actually be peer reviewed. Editorials, news items, and book reviews do not necessarily go through the same review process. A peer reviewed article should be longer than just a couple of pages and include a bibliography.
There are several ways to determine whether or not an article is peer-reviewed (also called refereed).
- If you found the article using WorldCat, it will have a peer-reviewed icon:
- If you found the article in a library database, there may be some indicator as to whether the article is peer reviewed.
- In the library databases, you might find that the journal name is a hyperlink as shown below. Clicking on it takes you to a page or displays a box about the journal which should make it clear whether the journal is scholarly, academic, peer reviewed, or refereed.
- Ask a Librarian to search for the journal title in UlrichsWeb Online. If this peer-reviewed icon is next to the journal title
then the journal is peer-reviewed. - You can also search for the journal website, then look for an editorial policy page that will tell you if the journal is peer-reviewed. You can usually find this information in the About section of the website.
Librarians provide research help to students, faculty and staff.
