Political Science 3103: What is a Peer Reviewed Article?

Most scholarly journals are peer-reviewed (or refereed) publications, which means articles in them must be evaluated and approved by a panel of experts before they can be published. Unlike articles in popular magazines or newspapers, which are mainly written by reporters for a general audience, articles in peer-reviewed journals are written by scholars or researchers for specialists or students in particular fields of study. Peer-reviewed journal articles are usually more in-depth in their coverage of a topic and cite sources used (footnotes, references lists, etc.). These articles have higher quality academic information than articles from magazines, newspapers, or information found on ordinary Web pages. Examples of peer-reviewed journals include:

• JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association
• Journal of Accountancy
• Journal of Animal Science
• Rural Sociology

NOTE:  To find out if a journal is peer-reviewed, use the UlrichsWeb journal directory database. 

Type in the title of the journal to search for its entry.  Ulrichs will tell you if a journal is "refereed" (peer-reviewed) with the  symbol, and it will tell you if it it is "trade" (industry news) or a "consumer" publication (magazine).  Most databases will let you limit your search to peer-reviewed journals.

Articles in peer-reviewed journals often rely on "primary research," which means the author has conducted experiments or gathered/analyzed data and is presenting his or her findings in the article.  "Secondary research" means the author of the article is reporting on the experiments or data of others, usually described in journal article they themselves wrote.  Some articles of secondary research are called "literature reviews"; in those, the author summarizes what has been written on a topic in other journal articles and thus reports on the primary research of others.  Many articles of primary research have sections in which they give literature reviews on what has been previously published on the topic, but then they describe the original research the authors conducted on that topic or problem area.

Most primary research articles in peer-reviewed journals have a standard structure with specific sections.  Sometimes those sections are labeled in the article itself.

• Abstract is a paragraph-long summary of the article and its conclusions.  It often appears in databases and is searchable, so authors want to make it clear and precise to draw readers to their whole article.  Some journals ask authors to supply keywords to describe their article in addition to an abstract.

• Introduction/Thesis (Problem to Study) sets out the problem area that the researchers/authors will be studying (hypothesis to be tested by experiment or data) and gives the thesis statement (what the article will be about)

• Literature Review does not always appear, but generally authors next give an overview of previous research on their topic.  These sources, other journal articles, books, proceedings, etc., are then cited in the References at the end of the paper in a standard bibliographic style (or a style for the specific journal).

• Methodology is the section in which the authors describe the primary research he or she has conducted for this article:  description of the experiment, discussion of the sample or test group, overview of the data gathered and analyzed, etc.  It is important to give a full account of how the data was collected so that the results could be theoretically reproduced by another researcher.

• Results gives a breakdown or analysis of the data gathered in the experiment, survey, study, etc.  It contains some discussion of what the results mean and how they prove or disprove the hypothesis from the introduction, or provide a solution to the problem, etc.

• Discussion/Conclusion gives a final summary of what the primary research has shown and what those results mean for the the problem area, and maps out areas for further research.

• References appear at the end in a standard style or one required by the journal

Not all journal article have these parts exactly in this order, but this gives you an idea of what to look for in the articles.  Read the abstract carefully since that usually explains the primary research conducted.

Here is an example of a primary research article on attitudes in the mass media towards global warming that was published in a 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Global Environmental Change (and found in PDF full-text format in the Science Direct database discussed on the Journal Article Databases tab of this library guide).  The article is a good example of the standard features of a primary research journal article in a peer-reviewed journal.

Here is a citation of the article in APA Style (6th Edition).  Since it comes from a database, a doi or "document object identifier" (unique number, found in this article on the bottom of the first page); for more on that, consult the links in the Citing Sources tab on this library guide).

Freudenburg, W. R. & Muselli, V.  (2010).  Global warming estimates, media expectations, and the asymmetry of scientific challenge.  Global Environmental Change 20, 483-491.  doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.04.003

The article contains information on the authors (university affiliations, contact information), and tells the reader how long the peer reviewing process took: when the article manuscript was first received, when it was resubmitted, presumably after suggested revisions from peer reviewers, and when it was finally accepted.

Note that this database has a hyperlinked (clickable) set of bookmarks on the left-hand panel you can use to navigate to the different sections of the article, and those follow the structure of a primary research article explained above.  Some of the features to look for in a peer-reviewed article are indicated in the image below.

The Article begins with an Introduction laying out the problem, then has a brief literature review before getting into the data collected and the methodology (in this case careful evaluation of media coverage of global warming in certain sources for a period of time).  Then it gives the results of their study and has a discussion--the conclusion.  At the end, the References section cites all the sources mentioned in the paper using a bibliographic style specified by the journal.