Not all journal articles are created equal. Know how to tell them apart.
Look up the number of times an article has been cited using cited reference searching.
Determine the impact factor for a journal using the Journal Citation Reports.
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.
Check out this video by Western Libraries for an overview of the peer-review process.
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 For example, letters to the editor appearing in a peer-reviewed journal are typically written by experts but are not peer-reviewed.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.