Q. How do I determine if an article I found is a scholarly, peer-reviewed source?

Peer reviewed articles are found in academic or scholarly journals. They are written by scholars and experts, but there is an extra step before publication: Other equally qualified scholars and experts review each article for accuracy and significance before it can be published in a peer reviewed journal.  Things you might look for on a scholarly article would be credentials after the author's name, indicating they are educated in the field; you might also look to see if there are sources listed at the bottom of the article showing where the author got their information.  Peer-reviewed articles will always be from academic journals.

Examples of what a peer-reviewed article might look like can be found on the library libguide Tips for Finding Peer Reviewed Articles. 

The easiest way to ensure you are getting a scholarly, peer-reviewed article would be to get articles from the library databases that are centered on academic journals.  Those databases can be found by going to our A-Z Databases page and filtering for academic & scholarly.  Here is the link: A-Z Databases: Academic & Scholarly. 

Gale Academic OneFile, JSTOR and ProQuest One Community College are good databases to use for scholarly sources. Login with your COM account for off campus access.

• In Academic OneFile, all of the results from your search will by default be considered scholarly sources. 
• With JSTOR, once you do a search, use the filters to select Journals under Academic Content - your results should now all be scholarly journal content. 
• With ProQuest, you will see a check box under your search box that says Peer Reviewed.  Check that box and do your search.  Your results will be limited to scholarly (peer reviewed) sources.