Journals and journal articles

Attributes of a scholarly journal:

• Most current research
• Abstract – a summary of the article 
• Author has academic credentials and institutional (e.g., university, research centre) affiliations
• Structured & formal language
• Specialised vocabulary 
• Discussion & conclusion can be the most useful
• Bibliography or reference list – useful to see more papers that may be relevant to your research
• Includes charts, statistics, tables etc.
• Might be peer reviewed.

 "Peer reviewed" means that an article is:

• Written by experts 
• An editor and one or more subject specialists review the article before it is published
• Accurate information
• Well-researched
• Contributes to knowledge in a field
• Mainly journal articles
• Published in legitimate journals
• Trust the information given is accurate and reputable

Using peer-reviewed articles means you already know that the research is credible and reliable and you should only need to determine if the content is relevant to your assignment.

While peer-reviewed journal articles are always scholarly, scholarly journal articles are not always peer-reviewed. You may be directed by your unit coordinator to only use peer-reviewed journal articles (in amongst other types of material) in an assignment. If not, you might choose to use scholarly journal articles that have not been peer-reviewed, but you must ensure you evaluate them. 

Look for the peer-reviewed icon in Library Search to identify peer-reviewed articles: 

Video Peer review in three minutes by NC State University Libraries and used under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.