6 Peer revi-what?

Scholarly journals have gone through the “peer review” process. The editor of a journal sends an article out to experts to review (e.g. they ask questions like, did the authors collect good data ethically? Did they collect enough data? Did they analyze it correctly? Is there obvious bias? Did they cite other important theories?).

The “peer reviewers” then give back to the editor one of three answers – yes, publish with minor revisions; yes, publish with major revisions; or do not publish. Each journal has a different “acceptance rate.” Some accept most of what gets submitted (e.g. 80%) and some barely accept any (e.g. 7%).

Some of your instructors may require you to use “peer reviewed” journals. Most of the Libraries articles search tools (also called databases) have a checkbox so you can limit to these sources.

Quick video break

#OMGBadResearchDoesGetPublished

Peer review was created to try to be sure research is “good” before it is published. It works pretty well most of the time. But be critical of all information you find. AND If you really want to find out some crazy stories of bad research head over to Retraction Watch.

Choose an option to move forward.

Option 1: How do I find articles in scholarly journals

Option 2: What about #fakenews

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UMN Libraries Adventure Copyright © by Kate Peterson; Lacie McMillin; and Kat Nelsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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