This information graphic from the International Journal of Computer Technology and Applications explains the peer-review process.
What are scholarly journal?
What is a scholarly journal?
Your lecturer has asked you to find an article in a peer reviewed journal. Where can you find it? How does it differ from other magazines or journals?
A primary difference between scholarly journals and other types of journals and magazines is that articles in these journals undergo a "peer review" process before they are published. What exactly does this mean?
Peer review is the process where the author's peers, recognized researchers in the field, read and evaluate a paper (article) submitted for publication and recommend whether the paper should be published, revised, or rejected.
Peer review is a widely accepted indicator of quality scholarship in a discipline or field. Articles accepted for publication through a peer review process meet the discipline's expected standards of expertise.
Peer-reviewed (or refereed) journals are scholarly journals that only publish articles that have passed through this review process.
Finding articles in scholarly/peer-reviewed journals
Many of the Library's article databases allow you to limit the search results to peer-reviewed or scholarly articles by:
do an Articles (Quick Search) in the search bar at the top of this page. Look for articles tagged as peer-reviewed.
checking the box "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" under limit or refine search.
clicking on the tab "Scholarly Journals" or "Academic Journals" while viewing results of a search.
Keep in mind, even though a particular journal is peer reviewed, an individual item in that journal may not be. Some article types, e.g. news items, comments, editorials, may not have gone through the peer review process. Scholarly articles are generally several pages long.