EN 101-07/11: College Composition

While the terms "Academic" and "Scholarly" can often be interchanged, they do vary:

• Academic Journals: Defined as journals that publish articles carrying footnotes and bibliographies, and whose intended audience is comprised of some kind of research community. It is a broad classification that includes both "peer-reviewed" journals as well as journals that are not "peer-reviewed" but intended for an academic audience.

• Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals: Defined as journals that are intended for an academic audience and have undergone the peer-review process.

Peer review is an extra layer of scrutiny of academic articles and is thus the highest standard of academic publication. It is important because:

• It acts as a filter to ensure that only high quality research is published, especially in reputable journals, by determining the validity, significance and originality of the study.
• It is intended to improve the quality of manuscripts that are deemed suitable for publication. Peer reviewers provide suggestions to authors on how to improve the quality of their manuscripts, and also identify any errors that need correcting before publication.

Sources: EBSCO; Kelly J, Sadeghieh T, Adeli K. Peer Review in Scientific Publications: Benefits, Critiques, & A Survival Guide. EJIFCC. 2014 Oct 24;25(3):227-43. .

• Use Ulrichsweb to get a snapshot of the publication details for most academic journals.
• To determine whether a specific journal is peer-reviewed, type its title into the search bar.
• Look for the "refereed" icon indicating that a specific journal is refereed (peer-reviewed).

In the below example, the black and white “ref jersey” icon in the second column indicates that American Anthropologist is refereed (peer-reviewed).