Skip to Main Content

BIO-1201 / BIO-1301: Science Research

How do you know...


If a journal is peer-reviewed?

  • You can look up the journal on its publisher's website. The journal publisher will state that it is peer reviewed on the About page, the Instructions for Authors page, or a Submit Manuscript page (or something similar to one of those).
    As an example, let's look at the Journal of Cell Biology.

  • When you search in the library databases, you can apply a filter to return only results that are from peer-reviewed journals.

If an article in a peer-reviewed journal is peer-reviewed?

  • Peer-reviewed journals don't only publish peer-reviewed research. They also publish opinion articles (sometimes called perspective pieces, or editorials, or commentary), and sometimes, book reviews and conference reports - none of which are scholarly / peer-reviewed.

  • You also may come across scholarly research labeled as pre-proofs or pre-prints or pre-press, usually meaning that while the research that was done was scholarly and the author's full draft is available, the paper has not yet been vetted by the peer review process.

If an article is primary / original research, or secondary (e.g. a review article)?

  • Sometimes, though not always, the journal page or the database results screen will label them as one of these types, 'Research,' or 'Review.'

  • Original research articles will have a Methods section, a Results section, and a Discussion/Conclusion section. These articles will likely mention the word 'study' in the title or abstract.

  • Review articles will typically mention the word 'review' in the title or abstract, and do not usually have the same structure (i.e. they often do not contain Methods and Results sections). Instead, they may offer charts listing the articles analyzed. You will see many in-text citations (Author Last Name, Year) throughout.