1. Scholarly journal articles.
2. Some scholarly books are either editorially reviewed or peer-reviewed or both.
Not all content in a peer-reviewed journal has been through the peer-review process.
It turns out that some peer-reviewed journals contain a mix of content including editorials, letters to the editor, opinions, book reviews, and commentary (in addition to articles), none of which is peer-reviewed. It's only the articles that are peer-reviewed, because they contain research results.
Important to note: Information that comes from peer-reviewed sources is not always accurate and reliable. Researchers and scholars make mistakes and - occasionally - deliberately mislead. All we can really say for sure is that peer-reviewed sources are less likely to be flawed and inaccurate, compared to other types of sources.
A peer-reviewed research article generally includes the following sections:
Abstract - includes a brief summary of the research and is typically followed by author credentials.
Introduction - the introduction will contain information about the authors' intentions for the article, why they did the research, and it will include the hypothesis or research objectives.
Methods - a description of the research methods used (survey, focus groups, statistical analysis, regression analysis, etc.); may also describe limitations with the selected method.
Results - scientific description of the findings.
Discussion - discusses the research in detail.
Conclusion - summarizes the findings and makes suggestions for future use of research.
Appendix/Appendices - may or may not be part of the article
References and/or bibliography
Researcher
When researchers conduct studies, they write up the results of those studies in the form of a journal article. Then, they submit the article to a journal in the hopes that the journal will publish it.
Editor
The editor of the journal (this is the person in charge of all the content published in the journal) will receive the submitted article and then identify a few experts who are peers of the author - that is, other experts working in the same discipline as the author. The editor will send the submitted article to those peers.
Peers
The peers will review the article to determine whether the authors' research methods seem to be valid and their conclusions make sense. They might also look at the importance and utility of the research, as well as the quality of the authors' writing. If the peers like it, they'll recommend that the article get published. If they don't like it, they'll let the editor know that they think the article should be revised and reviewed again, or rejected and not published.
Any journal that has this vetting process in place is called a peer-reviewed journal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| "Peer Review is defined as “a process of subjecting an author’s scholarly work, research or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field” (1). Peer review is intended to serve two primary purposes. Firstly, it acts as a filter to ensure that only high quality research is published, especially in reputable journals, by determining the validity, significance and originality of the study. Secondly, peer review is intended to improve the quality of manuscripts that are deemed suitable for publication. Peer reviewers provide suggestions to authors on how to improve the quality of their manuscripts, and also identify any errors that need correcting before publication." |
Kelly, J., Sadeghieh, T., & Adeli, K. (2014). Peer Review in Scientific Publications: Benefits, Critiques, & A Survival Guide. EJIFCC, 25(3), 227–243.