Evaluating Journal Articles

When you look at a printed copy of a journal, information about the author and publisher is readily available to you. You can page through the journal and see what other types of articles are published there, and you can often find out what credentials the author has by looking at their biographical information. If you are looking at the electronic version of the journal, you will need to click on the name of the journal for more information about it. In both electronic and print versions, you can see if a journal is peer-reviewed either by clicking on the journal title or by looking at the front matter in the print version of the journal.When searching for journal articles, it’s best to find articles that have been vetted by scholars in the field. Editors of refereed or peer-reviewed journals send prospective manuscripts to scholars who specialize in the topics covered, and these scholars critique the manuscripts without knowing the identity of the author. If an author has made claims that are unsubstantiated or considered problematic by their peers, the manuscript may not be published; if, on the other hand, the manuscript is deemed rigorous in its argument, it will be published. The review process is meticulous and dispassionate (since the reviewers don’t know whose manuscript they’re reading, they can’t play favorites). In contrast, journals that are not refereed publish manuscripts that have been reviewed only by an editor or editorial collective, and these manuscripts are not reviewed anonymously. In print sources, information about the editorial process is usually available near the front matter of the journal; in electronic sources, clicking on the journal title will usually lead to a page outlining the editorial procedures.