Scholarly writing or academic scholarship tends to come from people (like your professors) producing knowledge and engaging in conversation with fellow scholars in their field. This work may be published in academic journals, as a book, a chapter in an edited volume, or an online publication.

Learn to recognize scholarly sources with the following criteria:

• The author most likely will list their credentials such as their highest degree, university affiliation, and department.
• The writer uses highly specialized language, specific to a discipline or area of study.
• The work includes extensive citations, bibliographies, or footnotes, showing the author is aware of a body of scholarship relevant to the field.
• The content has been published by an academic institution or university press, the journal is specific to a field of study or discipline.
• The author's work is most likely "peer reviewed" or has gone through a rigorous editorial process by fellow experts in the field, which can take a long time. If you can't tell if something is peer reviewed, look up the journal or press website and see if you can find something out about the editorial process. Otherwise, you can always use a "peer review" filter in your databases search!

Remember- academic scholarship is only one type of information source. It isn't necessarily more credible or valid than other types of sources. Always be thinking critically about the author's methodologies and data analysis, and look for clear biases and political perspectives.

Let's look at the scholarly article below:

• What can you tell about the author's credentials? How could you find out what else they have written?
• How could you learn whether other scholar had made use of this research?
• What can you tell about the journal and who publishes it? how could you find out more?
• What are some of the different kinds of sources in the References list? How might they help other researchers?
• Do you recognize the citation format?

Finding peer-reviewed articles: When you are searching for academic, scholarly, peer-reviewed articles, the best place to start is to use the "Articles" tab on the library homepage, which has default filters set to scholarly articles in English.  Some databases, such as Academic Search Complete and other Ebsco databases also have this feature on the initial search screen.

• Start with academic or scholarly journals.  You won’t find peer-reviewed articles in popular, newsstand magazines.
• Look for research length, journal articles – not one page overviews of a topic and definitely not book reviews or editorials.

One note: A journal may be peer-reviewed, but that doesn’t mean that all information in that journal is actually refereed, or reviewed. For example, editorials, letters to the editor, or book reviews aren’t peer-reviewed parts of the journal.   

Use the hints below to get you started.

How do you determine if it’s a peer-reviewed journal article?

1. Check the journal title - often you can click on the title of the journal to get more information about the journal, including whether or not it is considered peer-reviewed.  Review the journal’s publication details to see if it is peer-reviewed.  If the journal is available online, look at the details provided within the database about publication.  Many databases like Academic Search provide a link and provides publication details, including scope and type of journal, including whether it is peer-reviewed.

2.    Check Ulrichsweb (on the Databases’ list) to determine if the journal is indicated as being peer-reviewed.

3.  Look at the official Web site of the journal on the Web.  Check About or Submission Guidelines to see if it states that the journal is peer-reviewed. Don’t just look at web pages about the journal – go to the publisher’s web page for the most accurate information.

 [adapted from http://www.angelo.edu/services/library/handouts/peerrev.php]