"Peer-reviewed" or "refereed" journals are those that subject content to a critical review by other experts in the field prior to accepting a manuscript for publication. Limiting your literature search to the peer-reviewed journals ensures a higher level of scholarship and research methodology.
Magazines, trade journals, and newspapers tend to be "non-peer-reviewed," meaning perhaps just the editor or someone who is not an expert in the field has reviewed the content before publishing.
Some article databases (not all) will have a filter (or "Limit") available for "peer-reviewed." Look for this feature in Proquest Central and CINAHL.
See this tutorial for more information about Peer Review in the Health Sciences.
) that indicates a journal is "refereed."Google Scholar is a time-saving, scholarly search interface accessible from within the Google interface. With Google Scholar, you can access peer-reviewed journal articles, books and book sections. For literature searching, specialized databases have more functionality and access more comprehensive results, but Google Scholar is a good tool to use for a search for a known item.
The next time you search scholar.google.com, the GetIt at NYU option will be available next to accessible article citations.
