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Peer Reviewed or Refereed Journals

                  

Forms of Peer-Review

• Double Blind or Blind Peer Review: submitted manuscripts are sent outside of the journal’s publishing or sponsoring organization for review by external reviewers (usually two, sometimes as many as four). In Double Blind, neither the author nor the reviewers know each other’s identities, thus ensuring impartiality. 

• Editorial Board Peer Review: submitted manuscripts are reviewed by an internal board of editors and not solely by one editor. Author’s identity may be known or unknown to the reviewing editors.  

• Open Peer Review: submitted manuscripts are reviewed by experts, and both the experts and the author are aware of each other’s identity. Sometimes authors are encouraged to suggest possible reviewers.  

 

The editor of the journal receives the manuscripts with comments back from the expert reviewer(s) and forwards them to the author with a summary recommendation. There are generally four different types of recommendations: 

1.  Publication as is 
2.  Needs revision to correct errors or answer certain questions 
3.  Does not fit the focus of the journal or 
4.  Not suitable for publication.

It is this scrutiny and review/revision that sets peer-reviewed journals apart from popular magazines that limit themselves to just “fact-checking.”

Clues That Indicate Peer-Review

• Description of the journal’s peer review process in instructions to authors or manuscript submission guidelines.
• Notice of an independent editorial review board in the journal’s front matter. Academic or scholarly affiliation of each member of the board is listed.
• The journal is listed in Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory “refereed” section.           

 

Peer Review Illustrated

Peer Review means that a board of scholarly reviewers in the subject area of a particular journal review materials the journal publishes for quality of research and adherence to editorial standards of the journal before articles are accepted for publication. If you use materials from peer-reviewed publications they have been vetted by scholars in that field for quality and importance.

 

Source: http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/howscienceworks_16

More Information

• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (Contains a copy of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals)
• Instructions to Authors List (maintained by the University of Toledo Mulford Health Science Library)
• World Association of Medical Editors

See Also:

• How to Identify Peer-Reviewed Journals / Articles 

Learning Objectives

• Defines peer review
• Recognizes that peer reviewed sources are scholarly sources
• Utilizes peer reviewed sources appropriately based on the research topic or question