This class requires students to use  articles from “peer-reviewed” journals. You mat hear other words like “refereed journals” or “scholarly journals” to describe the same type of journals. What are peer-reviewed journal articles, and why do teachers require their use?

Peer-reviewed or scholarly journals are written by experts and are reviewed by several other experts in the field before the article is published in the journal in order to ensure the article’s quality. In most cases the reviewers do not know who the author of the article is, so that the article succeeds or fails on its own merit, not the reputation of the expert.

How do you identify an article that qualifies a “peer-reviewed” journal article? Limit your database search to peer-reviewed journals only. I recommend using JSTOR. Nearly all of the journals collected in JSTOR are peer-reviewed publications. This means that, though all the information in JSTOR is held to a scholarly standard, not all of the publications are technically “peer-reviewed”  because there are archives containing primary sources that may result from your search.

Watch the video to create your own JSTOR account.

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