What is Peer Review?
You've been asked you to limit your research to peer reviewed articles. What does this mean?
Peer review is the process by which research is assessed for quality, relevancy, and accuracy.
In a peer reviewed, or refereed journal, each manuscript submitted to the publisher is first reviewed anonymously by a group of experts - peers in the same field of study. These reviewers assess the quality of the research, the accuracy of the findings, and the relevancy of the research to the journal or profession.
Peer-reviewed articles:
- Are also known as scholarly or refereed articles
- Are written by experts in the field
- Are written for other researchers/scholars
- Are reviewed by the scholar's peers to determine whether they are high-quality pieces of work
- Use terms and language that are discipline-specific
- Usually include in-text citations and a bibliography of cited sources
- May include graphs, charts, etc., related to the topic
- Are published by a professional organization or society, university, research center, or scholarly press
Peer review is quality control. You should be able to trust the scholarship of the research.
- All of the major journal citation databases (PubMed, CINAHL, etc) provided by the Ascension Wisconsin Libraries include peer review journals, but not all journals or articles therein are peer-reviewed. Use the Peer Review filter (when available) to refine your results.
- Examples that would NOT be considered peer-reviewed are: editorials, letters to the editor, opinion pieces, book reviews, blog posts, etc.
- Articles on pre-print servers may be in the active process of being peer reviewed, but until they are officially published in a professional journal, consider them only half-baked. Officially published articles may differ from preprints after changes and suggestions made in the peer review process.
Not sure which journal database to use for your research?
Need help limiting your search results to scholarly/peer reviewed materials?
Contact us! WIMedLibrary@ascension.org
You can find articles from peer-reviewed journals while searching PubMed by limiting to MEDLINE journals only.
Journals that are selected for MEDLINE undergo a vetting process that decides whether the scientific and editorial character and quality of a journal merits its inclusion in MEDLINE. There are over 5,200 titles that are currently indexed for MEDLINE. Most of these are peer-reviewed. Articles that are published in MEDLINE journals get medical subject headings (MeSH) applied to each article, making them more apt to be found in PubMed searches.
While most of the journals in the MEDLINE subset of PubMed are peer reviewed, you should double-check the peer reviewed status either through the journal's editorial page, or through lists like Ebsco's MEDLINE journals title list.
Limiting to MEDLINE Journals in PubMed:
- Run your search in PubMed.
- On the left side of the page, you'll see a list of filters to narrow your search results.
- Click on Additional Filters, then MEDLINE.
The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) features a Peer Reviewed filter.
You can limit your search from the advanced search screen by checking the "Peer Review" box under the Filters Tab [See below ...].
Find out if a journal in indexed for MEDLINE.
Search the journal title in the NLM Catalog. In the results list, look to see if the journal is "currently indexed for MEDLINE." Click the journal title to view more information such as coverage in MEDLINE and the MeSH terms that are applied to the journal.
Tips from the screenshot above:
A) Use the "Currently Indexed for MEDLINE filter on the left side of the page to limit the results list.
B) JAMA Neurology is currently indexed for MEDLINE.
C) Archives of Neurology is not currently indexed for MEDLINE, but if you click the journal title link, you will see that this journal changed names in 2013 to JAMA Neurology.
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