When you are conducting research you will most likely come across the term "peer reviewed." This phrase indicates that the research article in question has gone through the peer review process, a rigorous review process designed to weed out poor quality research. An article that goes through this process is first submitted to a journal, which then sends the article to several experts in their field who have agreed to serve as reviewers - thus the article is reviewed by the researcher's peers. The reviewers then send their comments back to the journal, who passes them along to the researcher. In most cases the whole process is anonymous to reduce bias. The reviewers can recommend edits or revisions to the article that must be completed before the article is accepted for publication, or the article can be accepted or rejected with no revisions.
The reviewers evaluate all aspects of both the article and the research itself, including methodology, quality of the literature review, the results and conclusions, and the overall writing quality and organization. This review process helps to prevent the publication of articles that contain poor or even fabricated research and/or conclusions. For example, if a research article reports reasonable and valid findings but then makes wild and unsubstantiated claims about what those results mean, the peer reviewers will most likely reject the article or recommend extensive revision before publication. As you can imagine, this review process makes it much harder and more competitive for researchers to publish their work in peer reviewed journals, and therefore you can be more confident in the quality of the research that makes it into these journals. Articles that are published without going through this review process are much more likely to be of poor quality than those that are reviewed.
Keep in mind that "peer reviewed" or "scholarly" might be interpreted slightly differently in different disciplines. Peer review is extremely important in the sciences and social sciences, whereas the arts and humanities may place less emphasis on the distinction. Be aware of the standards and expectations for your field when conducting research.
How do you determine if a journal or an article is peer reviewed? In many cases it is fairly easy to figure out if you are using a library database. The terms to look for are peer reviewed, scholarly, and refereed - all of these terms indicate the use of a peer review process. Many databases allow you to limit your search results to scholarly articles. For example, here is an image of the peer review limiters for an APA PsycINFO search:
Another way you can figure out whether an article is peer reviewed is to determine whether the journal it was published in is peer reviewed. If a journal is peer reviewed, it should be fairly easy to find out that information from the journal's home page. Peer review is very important, so those journals that are peer reviewed make sure everyone knows about it! If you cannot easily find the information, then the journal is most likely not peer reviewed. Places on a journal's website that are likely to have the information are the "About" section and 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 an example of a page from the website for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which mentions peer review in the very first sentence:
