HLTH 422

Scholarly peer review is a process to assure the quality of articles in a particular discipline or field of study. Work, activities, decision-making, and problem-solving need to be based on high quality evidence.  

In scholarly peer-review, articles are evaluated by other scholars/specialists who are experts in the specialty/topic of the article.

• The three or four reviewers of each article may recommend that the article be published as is, published after certain revisions, or not published.
• The "highest" level of peer review is a "double-blind" review in which the authors don't know who has evaluated their papers and the reviewers don't know whose papers they are reviewing. That ensures a fairer process of review.

Journals that use a peer-review process to select which articles they publish are called "peer-reviewed journals" or "refereed journals."

• In some scholarly journals, every article (except the editorial or introductory essay by an editor) has gone through peer review.
• Some scholarly journals may have news items, editorials, and other features that are not peer-reviewed and should not be confused with the peer-reviewed content.

Using peer-reviewed scholarly journals helps you base your work and decisions on credible evidence.

How can I find out if an article is peer-reviewed?

FIRST. Determine if the article is scholarly. Only scholarly articles are likely to be peer-reviewed, so you can automatically eliminate non-scholarly articles from consideration.

SECOND. Although most articles that publish original research and that are found using professional research databases are likely to be peer-reviewed, here are two ways to determine if a journal is peer-reviewed:

1. Go to the journal's website and look for the process the journal uses for selecting articles. On the journal's website:
   • look for the "About" link or
   • look for "submission guidelines," "author guidelines," "information for authors" or some other similar option. The author area will typically describe how articles are selected for publication. 
   • For example, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) states, "Peer reviewer identities are kept confidential, but author identities are made known to reviewers." Author identities remain anonymous to reviewers for the International Journal of Research and Method in Education: "Authors should prepare and upload two versions of their manuscript. One should be a complete text, while in the second all document information identifying the author should be removed from files to allow them to be sent anonymously to referees." 
      
2. Search Cabell's Directories of Publishing Opportunities.