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Chemistry: Evaluating Journal Articles

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Not all journal articles are created equal. Know how to tell them apart.

Evaluating Journal Articles

  1. Ensure the article has been peer-reviewed.
  2. Look up the number of times the article has been cited. A large number of citations may indicate that the article is important in its discipline.
  3. Determine the impact factor of the journal in which the article is published using the Journal Citation Reports.
  4. Remember that while peer-review, citation rate, and impact factor are useful, they are not substitutes for your own critical thinking. Just because an article has been published in a peer-reviewed journal with a high impact factor does not mean that it is free of errors, bias, or even outright fraud. For help evaluating scientific claims, see the following article:

Cited Reference Searching

Look up the number of times an article has been cited using cited reference searching.

Determining Impact Factor

Determine the impact factor for a journal using the Journal Citation Reports.

Peer-Review

Peer-review is a process by which journal articles, prior to being accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, are reviewed and commented on by experts in the field. If an article has been peer-reviewed, it has passed a minimum standard of quality as determined by the article author’s (or authors’) peers. Most, but not all, content in a peer-reviewed journal has been peer-reviewed. Visit the guide on how to tell if a journal is peer-reviewed for more information. If you are still unsure about whether a particular article has been peer-reviewed, please contact a librarian or your professor. 

The Peer-Review Process

Check out this video by Western Libraries for an overview of the peer-review process.

Scholarly vs. Peer-Reviewed

Though the terms “scholarly” and “peer-reviewed” are often used interchangeably, they have slightly different meanings. Content can be scholarly without having been peer-reviewed. Scholarly content is written by experts on their topic of expertise, but it may or may not have been peer-reviewed. For example, letters to the editor appearing in a peer-reviewed journal are typically written by experts but are not peer-reviewed. Note that “academic” and “scholarly” are synonyms.