Scholarly articles or journals can be referred to as peer-reviewed, refereed, authoritative or academic.

Scholarly or peer-reviewed articles are reviewed by other scholars or professionals in the field before being accepted for publication. The peer-review process ensures that only valid, accurate, and quality research that contributes to the body of knowledge in a field is published.

Peer-reviewed or scholarly publications are produced specifically for academics, scholars and professionals.

A peer-reviewed article will usually:

• be written in academic language
• have authors with academic credentials
• have an abstract
• have an extensive list of references.

You can find scholarly and peer-reviewed articles in Library databases. Google Scholar can be provide access to peer-reviewed articles however you will need to do some further investigation as not all journal articles in Google Scholar are peer-reviewed. A good way to locate this information is by searching for the journal the article came from. The journal home page will provide this type of information.

Some databases such as JSTOR contain scholarly journals only. Others have a mix of scholarly journals, popular magazines, trade publications and other material. In databases such as ProQuest Arts Premium, you can limit your search to scholarly peer-reviewed articles.

If you need help identifying scholarly articles, ask a Librarian for help!