Now that you're familiar with the differences between scholarly, trade, and popular periodicals, you're ready to search for them. Many of the library's databases make it easy to find specific kinds of articles. Keep in mind, different databases use different words, such as Scholarly, Academic, Peer Reviewed, or Refereed, to designate scholarly sources.
Here's an example of some of the options in OneSearch that can help you find certain types of articles. Choose "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" if you're looking for scholarly sources. Choose "News" and/or "Magazines" if you're looking for popular sources.
Some databases are set up differently. Here's APA PsycINFO, which allows you to search for peer-reviewed articles via the Advanced Search screen:
What if you prefer to use Google Scholar or Google to find articles? You can still figure out whether your search results are scholarly, trade, or popular. There are two ways to tell if an article has been through the peer-review process.
The first strategy is to look at the article itself. Here's an example of an article from Arthroplasty Today. On the first page is a list of dates:
The dates indicate that this article has been through peer review. The "Received" date is the date it was first submitted to the publisher; the "Accepted" date is the date it was received back after the authors made changes based on their reviewers' comments; and the "Available online" date is date that it was first published online.
If the article doesn't have a list of dates like this, another strategy is to visit the journal's home page. Journals that have a peer-review process should be clear and up-front about it. If you cannot easily find the information, then the journal is most likely not peer reviewed.
On the journal's website, try checking the "About" section and/or the "For Authors" section. Most journal home pages have instructions for authors who want to submit articles to the journal, and these guidelines should tell you if the article will go through the peer review process or not. For example, here is the "Aims & Scope" section for Arthroplasty Today:
Also, here is the page where authors can submit an article. The "Instructions for Reviewers" section indicates that the journal has a peer-review process:
Well ... not quite. That search option is looking for journals that have a peer-review process. However, as mentioned here, scholarly journals usually contain other content, such as editorials, letters, news stories, corrections to previous articles, information about conferences, and press releases. Those articles are not usually peer-reviewed.
Even if you find an article from a peer-reviewed journal, you'll need to make sure that the article itself was reviewed. The easiest way to do that is to look for the dates on the actual article, as described above.
