Scholarly communication is a conversation and your own research allows you contribute to that conversation. Your work responds to previous publications and your citations and References list acknowledge this. Once you have published, your work will contribute to the web of scholarly communication.
Certain journals publish peer-reviewed articles. Before the editors of the journal publish an article they send the article out to scholars in the subject area for review. The scholars examine the article to make sure it reflects solid research in the field. If these reviewers have reservations about the article the journal may not publish the article or may require the author to make changes. This thorough editorial process results in highly-regarded scholarship.
Note that the terms refereed and vetted are also used to describe articles that have undergone this process.
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Some databases have a peer-reviewed limiter that will limit your results to articles from peer-reviewed journals. Caution: Make sure your source is a research article; you may retrieve other types of articles, such as editorials, that are not peer-reviewed.
A journal's Web site will often indicate if publication is peer-reviewed.
Use UlrichWeb.com, a database available from Briggs Library. Enter the journal's name in the search field. You'll see an icon resembling a referee's jersey by peer-reviewed or refereed publications.
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