Skip to Main Content

Education Research Overview

Overview of literature review process and Education resources

Go Deeper

Primary and secondary sources like the articles and books you can find here will help you gain a deeper understanding of your research area. These provide detailed and specific information that informs readers about new discoveries or displays original thinking about a topic.

Determining if your Source is Peer Reviewed

If a source is peer-reviewed, it usually means that it was reviewed by professionals prior to publication. This kind of publication is highly selective, and the review process is pretty rigorous, which means these are some of the most trustworthy sources you can find. But how can you determine if your source is peer-reviewed? Below are three ways to determine whether a journal is peer reviewed:

Search our Journals List

If you're looking to see if a specific journal is peer reviewed, one of the best places to go is our Journal's List here at Memorial Library. First, click on the "Journals List"  tab above the search bar in the middle of the Library Home page.  

use the journals list search option on the mavscholar search box on the library's main page. 

Then search for your journal or magazine. You can do this in a variety of ways. First, you can search for the journal or magazine by the title or title words. You can also search by part or whole of the journal's ISSN number.

Journal Name Search 

Once you've found your journal, take a closer look at the entry. Look under the title for an icon that says Peer Reviewed to indicate if the journal uses the peer review process.

if the journal is peer reviewed it will have an icon saying peer reviewed.

Searching Ulrich's Periodical Directory

Another method for determining if a journal and its articles are peer-reviewed or not is to look it up. One way to check is through something like Ulrigh's Periodical Directory, which will have a lot of information about the journal or magazine, including if the source is peer-reviewed, or "refereed". Use the link below to search for your journal title in Ulrich’s Periodical Directory.

Ulrich's Periodical Directory

If you see this  icon Ulrich referred icon then the journal is refereed or peer-reviewed.

the striped shirt icon next to the journal means that the source is peer reviewed or refereed.

Search a Journal's Website

Your last option for determining if a source comes from a peer-reviewed journal is to find information from the journal itself. Search for the journal title on the web. From there, look for an editorial policy page or a page for authors to find out if the journal uses a peer review process. This will be where the journal says if it's peer-reviewed, or what kind of editorial process it has. An example of this is below.

A journals about this journal page shows that this journal is in fact peer reviewed

If you have any trouble, please talk to a librarian.

Ask a Librarian

Articles

Books

Additional Resources

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
.