What is Peer Reviewed?
Many writing assignments require students to use "research," "scholarly," "peer-reviewed," or "referred" journals. These terms are often used interchangeably, although "peer reviewed" is the clearest and most specific way to designate this type of publication.
Start by viewing this YouTube video Scholarly vs. Popular Periodicals, to see and understand the differences between scholarly journals, trade publications, and general magazines.
Peer-reviewed or Referred journals are many scholars' most important sources of information. These journals do not publish an article unless it is recommended by other scholars/experts. Often this recommendation must be made blindly, without the reviewer knowing who the author is.
A "research" article will almost always appear in a peer-reviewed journal. These are articles in which the author(s) report the research results they have conducted. They are one of several types of articles that such journals routinely publish.
Most of our databases have the option to limit search results to peer-reviewed journals. See the examples below from Discovery search, Gale's Academic OneFile, and EBSCO Business Source Ultimate to show you where to limit a search to peer-reviewed articles
Discovery Search for journal articles
Gale Databases showing Academic OneFile - this location is the same in all Gale Databases
EBSCO Databases showing Business Source Ultimate - this location is the same in all EBSCO Databases
The foundational search methods described below can be applied as you need them to narrow your topic, hone in on specific content, or identify related terms and relationships. They can be applied in the library Discovery search, databases, Google Scholar, or general search engines.
Keywords
Discovering the right combination of keywords for your research topic takes time. It's a process. You may use one group of words first and then try another group of related words or phrases all in the search process to find the right combination that fits your topic direction. Below you'll see suggestions to maximize keyword searching.
Use Boolean to focus your search.
Prince George's Community College
Using Punctuation to Change Results
Truncation means adding a symbol to a word that will change your results. Most of the database help pages will list the truncation symbols that can be applied to a search. These are common symbols in use:
Subject Headings
Review the subject headings found in relevant articles from library databases. Subject headings are official terms that are usually clickable either from the result list or from the full record seen after you click on the source's title. Using these to guide your search helps to focus the results.
Filters are found in Discovery search, library databases, and search engines. They are ways you can narrow down or focus your search results on retrieving the most relevant resources.
| Date range |
You may want to limit the search results you're seeing based on when they were published. For example, evidence-based medicine often involves looking at research from the last five years, while a project taking a historical perspective will want to include work going further back in time. |
| Language |
Consider limiting your search results to just those published in languages that you can read research in. (Note: your professor/advisor may have additional language restrictions, so if you're including research in multiple languages make sure that works for them too.) |
| Source Type |
Literature reviews usually rely rather narrowly on various scholarly or academic sources rather than the full spectrum of sources available to you. Consider limiting your results to Academic or Scholarly articles. |
| Article Type |
Sometimes you just need a systematic review, empirical study, or another form of research. Subject-specific databases will almost always offer a way to narrow down your results by methodology (article type). When the filter isn't available, you can add your method of choice as an additional keyword! |
Search alerts can save valuable research time and can be set up to provide automatic e-mail notifications whenever new search results become available. You can also retrieve those alerts to perform the search immediately instead of waiting for the alert to run.
Databases:
You must create a free account in the database to save your customized search alert that will automatically run based on your set parameters.
