When you are searching in a database, sometimes there is a checkbox you can use to limit your results to peer-reviewed journal articles. There is also sometimes an indication next to each article whether or not it came from a peer-reviewed journal. As a librarian, I’d like to say that these databases are entirely to be trusted in helping you filter out just those articles that came from peer-reviewed journals, but in truth I can’t say you can trust the databases 100% of the time.

Whenever I am trying to know for sure whether a publication is a peer-reviewed one, here’s how I figure it out: I go to the website of the publication itself and see if I can tell whether it’s a peer-reviewed scholarly journal or a magazine based on the info I can see on the publication’s own website. While I may not be able to read the articles on the website of the publication, I can probably find enough clues on the site to tell.

Here’s how I proceed:

• Google the name of the journal to see if I can find its home page on the web. Here are some for example:

Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology

Knowledge Management Research & Practice

KMWorld

• Sometimes right on the home page, it says that it is a magazine or a peer-reviewed journal. In other cases, it doesn’t, and you have to do some digging on the website to learn more.
• I look for a page on the site that is labelled something like “about” or “about us” to see if they tell me magazine or journal. For example, on the “About Us” page for KMWorld, they refer to it as a magazine.
• If there is no “about us” or “about page” I look for pages that are written to let prospective authors know about submission guidelines. These pages tend to be labeled with words like “instructions for authors” or “editorial guidelines” or “submission guidelines.” If the journal is peer-reviewed the guidelines for authors page will explicitly mention peer-review as part of the submission process. For example, on the website for Knowledge Management Research & Practice is an “Instructions for Authors” page that describes how peer review works at that journal.
• Sometimes a quick glance at the table of contents for a recent issue tells me all I need to know. If most of the articles in an issue have long page counts (5-6 pages at a minimum), then it is also likely a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. If all the articles are 1-2 pages, then it’s likely a magazine. If you look at the table of contents for the current issue of Knowledge Management Research & Practice you can see that many of the articles are very long, a indicator that this is likely a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.
• You can also search for the name of the publication in a special database the library subscribes to called Ulrichsweb. When you find a listing for the publication in the database, you can see whether or not it is “refereed,” as you can see in this example: