A peer reviewed journal is a periodic publication in which the substantive articles are selected by peers of the authors who are submitting their work for publication. For example, articles in the Journal of Applied Microbiology are selected by specialists in the field of applied microbiology. Usually these specialists are faculty members teaching and conducting research at a college or university but sometimes are researchers at institutes or company laboratories. These specialists usually are not professional editors and select articles for publication based on whether the articles advance knowledge in their particular academic or research discipline. Most peer reviewed journals also contain letters to the editors, professional society news, book reviews, and other brief articles that are not usually considered "peer reviewed articles" although they appear in a peer reviewed journal. Peer reviewed journals are also sometimes called "scholarly journals" or "academic journals".

EBSCOHost Databases

The library's EBSCOHost online * Academic Search Premier, * Business Source Premier, and * Professional Development Collection [for Educators] contain many peer reviewed journals but not all of the publications in these databases are peer reviewed. There are four basic ways to determine that articles in these three EBSCOHost databases are peer reviewed:

In the main search window select Peer Reviewed in the Limit Your Results portion of the search screen before clicking on Search. To find full text articles in peer reviewed journals also click on Full Text and limit your search to articles greater than three or four pages (e.g., enter >3 in Number of Pages window) to filter out shorter articles such as letters to the editor, book reviews, etc. All of the articles returned from your search are from peer reviewed journals.

Select Publications from the EBSCOHost menu bar, find the periodical in question, click on the periodical title to view the publication overview, click on Publication Details after the title on the overview display, check for Y or N on the Peer Reviewed line. Note: If you are viewing the citation for an article, click on the title of the publication in which the article appears to view the publication overview, then click on Publication Details.

If you are sure of the name of the publication and are sure it is covered in the database, at the main search screen enter the exact name of the publication in the Magazine window, click on Peer Reviewed, then click on Search. If no results are found, then your publication is not a peer reviewed journal. If results are found, then your publication is a peer reviewed journal.

Check the Academic Search Premier title list, Business Source Premier title list or Professional Development Collection [for Educators] title list. Look in the Peer Reviewed column of the publication in question. A Yes in the Peer Reviewed column indicates it is peer reviewed, a [blank] indicates it is not peer reviewed.

Several other EBSCOHost databases will limit searches to peer reviewed articles from the main search screen and provide peer reviewed information on the publication details screen, but their title lists do not indicate peer reviewed status.

ELibrary

There are also peer reviewed journals in the library's * ELibrary database. To search for ELibrary articles appearing in peer reviewed journals, enter your search words in the search window, then click in the Peer Reviewed box in the Advance Search portion of the screen before clicking on Search. There is no need to deselect the source types -- e.g., newspapers, radio/tv transcripts, etc. -- since selecting Peer Review automatically returns only articles from journals (grouped with magazines in ELibrary's terminology). All articles in ELibrary are full text. There is no separate listing in peer reviewed journals in ELibrary nor is there a description of the title indicating peer review status as there is in EBSCOHost databases. When your search results for peer reviewed journals are displayed, each article should have a Scholarly Journals icon associated with it.

Print Subscriptions

The Red Rocks Community College library subscribes to around 50 peer reviewed journals in print. A particular Red Rocks publication may appear in an EBSCOHost title list (see above) that indicates its peer reviewed status. If not, look on or near the table of contents page of an issue to see if the publication explicitly states that it is peer reviewed. Peer reviewed articles can usually also be identified by their tendency to have lengthy titles, highly technical content, and multiple authors.

ProQuest Newspapers

The library's ProQuest database contains only newspaper articles. Newspapers are not peer reviewed journals.