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Ornithology Research Skills Guide: Is it peer reviewed?

Peer review

Articles published in peer-reviewed or refereed journals have been through a formal approval process. An editor and one or more subject specialists review the article before it is accepted for publication. This process is intended to ensure that the article is accurate, well-researched, and contributes to the body of knowledge in the field.

The Library's Primo Search tool and some journal databases include an option to limit your search to scholarly or peer reviewed articles, while others include this information as a part of the record. While this is an indication that the article could be peer-reviewed the definitive way to find out is to use Ulrichsweb.

Finding peer reviewed articles

Check if the journals are peer reviewed

To check if an article comes from a peer reviewed journal:

  • Search for the journal title (not the article title) or the journal ISSN
  • Locate the journal on the results list
  • If there is a referee's jumper () in the column on the left it means the journal (and therefore the article) is peer reviewed. In the United States of America they refer to the peer review process as refereeing, hence the referee's jumper.

If you searched by journal title, you may get more than one result for the same journal, like in the example above. This sometimes indicates that there is both a hard copy and an electronic copy of this journal.

If you are unsure, you can always go back to the article record from your original search and get the journal's ISSN number from there.

Try it now

Use the Ulrichsweb database to check whether the articles you have found are from peer reviewed journals.

Remember to search for the journal title, not the article title.

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