Information Literacy In Real Life (IL IRL)

Peer-Review

You may have heard in some of your classes at SCC that you need to use peer-reviewed sources for research or that peer-reviewed sources are some of the best sources to use for assignments. Outside of the classroom, you may also hear some news sources talking about peer-reviewed studies when discussing a topic.

Peer-review is a process that academic journal articles go through before they are published. During the peer-review process, once an article has been submitted to an academic journal for publication, it will first be reviewed by other subject-matter experts, who will decide if an article should be published in the academic journal. Peer-reviewed sources are considered some of the most credible sources, because so many experts have reviewed an article and recommended the article for publication in an academic journal.

Some things peer-reviewers might be looking for include: if the article meets the standards of the journal, if the research in the article makes sense (for example, if the article mentions an experiment, could that experiment be replicated by other scientists?), and if the article provides new or interesting advancements in a specific field. There are many different types of peer-review including single blind peer-review (when the author of an article does not know the identity of their reviewers) or double blind peer review (where neither the author of the article or the reviewers know each other's identity) to help prevent any bias in the peer-review process.

To learn more about the peer-review process, check out the below video from North Carolina State University: