Check to See if a Journal is Peer Reviewed

There are several ways to determine whether or not an article is scholarly or peer reviewed. If you want to verify that the article's journal is peer reviewed, then here some ways to find out. Note that an article can be from a peer reviewed journal and not actually be peer reviewed. Editorials, news items, and book reviews do not go through the same review process. 

Find peer reviewed Articles in the PSU Library Catalog

First, you can search for peer reviewed articles and journals in the PSU Library catalog. After your keyword search, filter your results on the left-hand side. Look under Availability and select Peer reviewed Journals. 

This image shows the option to narrow down to peer reviewed journals.

Find Peer Reviewed Articles in PSU Library Databases

Search the multidisciplinary database, Academic Search Premier, for peer reviewed articles by selecting Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals.

This image shows a keyword search with two results shown. The first result is an article from an academic journal, and the second result is a newspaper article. Newspapers are not peer-reviewed, but the academic journal might be. Select the filter, Limit To, then select Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals.

The best practice for finding out if a journal is peer reviewed is to go to the journal website or look it up in Ulrichs International Periodicals Directory.

Find Peer Reviewed Articles in Ulrichs

Look up the journal title in the Library database, Ulrichs International Periodicals Directory. Look for a refereed shirt icon   that represents peer reviewed articles. 

There might be multiple versions of a journal with the same title, or journals with very similar titles. This is often the case when online and print versions exist, or the journal has changed publishers. The image below shows multiple similar journals, The Science Teacher and Science Teacher. Check the details to learn more about the journal.

Check the Journal's Website

The journal's website indicates whether articles go through a peer review process.