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ECS 300: How to tell if a journal is peer-reviewed

What is peer-reviewed?

  • A peer-reviewed journal, sometimes also called refereed, is a journal where the articles are vetted by the article author's peers. In other words, if an educational scholar wants to submit his or her article to a peer-reviewed journal, a group of other educational scholars who review articles for the journal have to agree that it is good/rigorous enough to be included in their journal
  • Here are some criteria for telling popular magazines from trade journals and from academic, peer-reviewed journals

How to tell if a journal is peer-reviewed

  • You can't always trust an article database on whether or not a particular journal is peer reviewed. To find out whether it is or not, you can:

a) Search the journal title in Ulrich's Periodical Index

  • Ulrich's Periodical Index is a database that lists many journals published worldwide
  • The U of R Archer Library subscribes to it
  • If Ulrich's have an entry for the journal, they'll include the journal's homepage
  • To search for a journal in Ulrich's:
  • Click on the link above, or:
  • Go to the Library's homepage, http://www.uregina.ca/library
  • Click Search/Find in the left-hand menu
  • Click Find Articles
  • Under Find Database by Title, type: ulrich
  • Click Find
  • If you’re coming from off campus, you’ll be asked for an ID and password. Your ID is your last name, without hyphens or spaces and in lower case, and your password is the barcode number (not student number) on your student ID card. You can also use your U of R e-mail/URCourses/computer account ID and password instead
  • In Ulrich's, go to the Quick Search box located in the centre of the screen
  • Type the journal title, e.g. green teacher
  • Click the title of the journal that you're searching to see its full record. There will be a line saying "Refereed" and "Yes" if it's peer-reviewed. If it's not peer-reviewed, it will either say "No" or the "Refereed" line won't be there at all
  • Note: Green Teacher is not peer-reviewed, even though it comes up in an "Academic/peer reviewed" search in CBCA Education

b) Search the journal title in Google or another search engine

  • If the journal isn't in Ulrich's, you can search for its website, which will tell you whether it's peer-reviewed or not
  • In Google or another search engine like Bing, type the journal title in double quotation marks so that it's read as a phrase
  • E.g., type: "canadian journal of education"
  • Please note: the journal's homepage doesn't always come up as the first link; make sure you have the homepage by looking for guidelines for authors, subscription information, or editorial information on the page
  • Usually, there will be writers' guidelines called "Submission guidelines," "Writers' guidelines," or something similar. That's the section where they will frequently tell you whether the journal is peer-reviewed
  • The information may also be under the general information on the journal, or under something like "editorial policy"
  • Sometimes it will say "blind review" when it's peer-reviewed