Peer-remewed articles
Posted on: November 9, 2015
Book by Dave Higgins is licensed under CC-BY-2.0.
Pre-access to Higher Education students have been looking at sources this week. Do you know the difference between a peer-remewed…sorry peer-reviewed journal and and a professional journal?
A peer-reviewed journal has a board of expert editors looking over the submitted articles before they are published. Here’s a great blog post explaining more about what to look out for to see whether it is a peer-reviewed article. They are found mainly at university level with professors and researchers who already know a lot about their subjects as the target audience. Here’s a website called OpenDOAR where you can search for university-level articles, many of which are peer-reviewed. However, rather than reading the whole thing you may just want to get an overview of the the research and conclusions by reading the abstract.
On the other hand we have journals that are aimed at people working in the professions that they are writing for. We have a number in the LRC, such as ‘New Scientist’ and ‘New Statesman’. These have shorter articles and the language is often easier to understand than peer-reviewed journals. The editing process is not as strict so the information may not have as much authority as that of peer-reviewed articles. However, they are still excellent sources.
Did we miss anything out? We hope you are enjoying the first stages of your project.
Hillcroft LRC 
Leave a comment