In many cases, students will be required to utilize articles from “peer-reviewed” journals or "scholarly" publications.
Articles are written by experts and are reviewed by several other experts in the field before the article is published in the journal in order to ensure the article’s quality. (The article is more likely to be scientifically valid, reach reasonable conclusions, etc.) In most cases, the reviewers do not know who the author of the article is, so that the article succeeds or fails on its own merit, not the reputation of the expert.
NOTE: Not all information in a peer-reviewed journal is actually reviewed. For example, editorials, letters to the editor, book reviews, and other types of information don’t count as articles, and may not be accepted by your professor.
Limiting a database search to peer-reviewed journals ONLY will aid in your search for finding and determining qualified articles.
For example, Academic Search Elite has this feature on the initial search screen. In some databases you may have to go to the Advanced Search to limit your results to peer-reviewed articles.
