Peer Reviewed, Refereed and Scholary Journals: How To Find Them   Tags: academic, journals, peer, peer_reviewed, refereed, reviewed, scholarly  

How Can I Check Whether a Journal Is Peer-reviewed?

See below for databases that allow the user to search for articles that are only available in peer-reviewed journals (these databases might use the term academic, scholarly or refereed instead of peer-reviewed, but in these instances they all mean the same thing).  Scientific, medical or engineering databases handle only peer-reviewed journals, so you don't have to specify with those databases.

Image: Turimetta Beach, Sidney, Australia by Pavel Sigarteu at Flickr Commons  

Ulrichsweb.com - An authoritative source of bibliographic and publisher information on more than 300,000 periodicals of all types — academic and scholarly journals, Open Access publications, peer-reviewed titles, popular magazines, newspapers and newsletters.

CINAHL from EBSCO
Select “Peer Reviewed Journals” from the Journal Subsets window 

Academic Search Premier from EBSCO
On the Keyword Search screen under Limit Your Results, select “Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals"

OneFile [Academic and General OneFile]  from GALE Cengage
When using the "Advanced Search" or "Power Search"  limit results to  "peer-reviewed publications"  

Ethnic News Watch from ProQuest
On the Basic Search or Advanced Search screen, under Limit Results, select “Scholarly journals, including peer-reviewed” 

PsycINFO or PsycARTICLES  from ProQuest

What Peer-Reviewed Means 

Peer-reviewed (or refereed, scholarly, etc.) journals are journals that are committed to a rigorous editorial process where submitted articles are reviewed by experts in the field before they are accepted.  

Because they are highly selective, peer-reviewed journals are usually the most prestigious in their fields.

Scholarly or academic journals are mostly, but not always, peer-reviewed. 

Use this list of General Criteria to help you tell the difference between popular magazines, trade magazines, and scholarly journals.

Lists of Peer-reviewed Journals 

While there is no exhaustive source that lists all peer-reviewed journals there are some comprehensive sources available. Try: 

ISI Master Journal List 

Australian Dept of Education, Science and Training’s Register of Refereed Journals  (click on Availabilty)

CINAHL Peer-Reviewed journals in health sciences
 
Eigenfactor: Ranking and Mapping Scientific Journals - Eigenfactor.org ranks scholarly journals in the natural and social sciences, and also lists newsprint, PhD theses, popular magazines and more.  

PAIS International Peer-reviewed Journals list  - If the Journal is not listed check the journal website. It can often give you the information you need.