At some point in your college career, your instructor may request that you find scholarly, peer-reviewed or refereed journal articles to use in your assignments. These are a reliable source of information appropriate for academic writing. Recognizing scholarly work is one aspect of evaluating information, an essential skill.

The terms scholarly, refereed and peer-reviewed are often used interchangeably, but it is important to understand the distinction.

Peer-reviewed and refereed: Articles published in peer-reviewed or refereed journals have been through a strict approval process. An editor and one or more subject specialists usually reviews the article before it is accepted for publication. This process is designed to ensure the article is accurate, well-researched, and contributes to the body of knowledge in a field.

Scholarly: Scholarly articles report on research or analytical studies undertaken in a scholarly environment. Some characteristics of scholarly publishing are:

• Scholarly journals are often peer-reviewed or refereed.
• Scholarly articles often start with an abstract.
• Scholarly articles rigorously cite their sources in the form of footnotes or bibliographies.
• The author of the article is normally a researcher or scholar in the field whose credentials or affiliated institution are listed at the beginning or the end of the article.
• Language used is specialized and often assumes some scholarly background on the part of the reader.
• Scholarly articles about research will describe the research methodology.
• Scholarly journals are usually published by an academic institution, research body, professional organization, or scholarly press.
  
  

Read the database descriptions on the library's web site to determine if they contain scholarly information. You can also view this information by clicking on the that follows the database name on the Databases by Name web page. Resources a librarian has recommended will usually contain a large number of scholarly and peer-reviewed articles.

Some databases provide an option for limiting your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed articles. Two database platforms which offer this search option are EBSCOhost and ProQuest. However, limiting your search at the very beginning of your research effort means you'll miss out on valuable leads to further information.

The best strategy is to search all kinds of sources at first. Once you have a good overview of the information that is available on your topic, you can filter out any sources that aren't scholarly.

Ask a librarian in person, on the phone, or by email.