Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Research Guide

Finding peer-reviewed articles

For the work you do at this level, you will likely need to seek articles that are "peer-reviewed" (sometimes also referred to as "scholarly"). In EBSCO databases, you have several tools to help you find peer-reviewed articles.

From the library's home page, you can choose a subject-specific database by going to "Online Resources."  If you want to do a multiple-database search, start with Academic Search Ultimate. (See instructions for multiple-database searches on this LibGuide.)

 

Once you are inside of an EBSCO database, there are a few ways locate peer-reviewed articles.

1. Do a search and look for results that are from an "Academic Journal." Also, you can use the limiters to narrow to only articles from peer-reviewed journals.

screenshot of an article with arrow pointing at the number of pages in the article

 

2. Evaluate your results: look for articles that are more than a few pages long. Peer-reviewed articles won't be short. Also review the abstract for indications that this is a research article or some sort of study. You can also click on the journal name to learn more about that publication.

screenshot of an article results screen with notes on where to look to further evaluate a source

 

3. If you click on the journal name, you can learn more about that publication. Often the publication details page will tell you if a journal is peer-reviewed or not.

screenshot of a journal's information page in an online database

 

 

 

How to identify a peer-reviewed article

Look For These Components in a Research Article

An abstract

A list of keywords

A literature review

Some description of research methodology

References or Works Cited information

Original research

Authors who are expert(s) in the field, usually faculty at academic institutions

No advertisements

Evidence of a peer review process (submitted, revised, and accepted dates, usually on the first page of the article)

Specialized vocabulary/jargon, specific to the field