Pharmacy Guide: Quality journals - Peer Review

Refereed and peer reviewed mean the same thing.  If you are not sure if a journal is peer reviewed look at the journal's own information or check it out in Ulrich's international periodicals directory (online)

1. Go to Ulrich's website by clicking on the link below.

2. Type the title of the journal in the Title search box.

3. If the journal has an icon like a referee's shirt next to it...that means it is peer reviewed.

Peer-review (also known as refereeing) is the process journal editors use to ensure the articles they publish meet the standards of good scholarship.  Academic papers (journal articles, research papers etc) are examined by a panel of other scholars in the field (the author's peers).  The panel may decide to accept the paper, recommend revision or reject it completely.

Any resource that passes the peer-review process can be considered to have the highest level of academic credibility -  although of course you still need to consider other elements such as age, relevance etc.

Not all journals use peer-review.  Some lecturers may specify that only peer reviewed resources are to be used in assignments.

Searching for peer-reviewed articles in databases

Some databases only contain articles from peer reviewed journals.  Scopus and Medline are examples of those databases.

Other databases (like Informit or Proquest) allow you to narrow your search to return only peer-reviewed results. Unfortunately this process differs from database to database.  Sometimes this is as easy as simply ticking a box that says “Peer-reviewed”.