Scholarly Journals: The Peer-Review Process

A good sign that a journal is scholarly is if it uses a peer-review process before publishing an article. Popular journals publish articles written by staff or guest writers, who are paid to write them. Scholarly journals publish articles written by subject experts, who write them as a part of the research process. The peer-review process requires other subject experts to review an article and assess whether it's worthy of publication.  They consider things like the relevancy of the topic, accuracy, methodology, originality, significance, and quality.

Look for evidence that a peer-review process is in place.  This is not always easy to find out, and may require some digging.  Read "About the journal". If a peer-review process takes place, it should say so.

Not all scholarly journals use peer-review, but the majority do.

 

Back to the Journal page to try the practice.