What Are Databases?
What is Peer Review?

What Are Databases?

Database Structure

A database is a digital container that holds many journals. And in turn, each of those journals contains many articles. This taxonomy allows you to see that articles feed into journals and journals feed into databases. The result is that you can search for literally thousands of peer-reviewed articles on a certain topic within a single database.

High quality peer-reviewed journals like Nature and the Journal of Applied Psychology can appear across multiple databases. Think about how a pair of shoes can be purchased on eBay, Foot Locker, PayLess Shoes. Multiple databases may have access to one and more of the same journal, and all of its articles.

Conversely, some databases are special in that they only carry one type of journal or article. For instance, there are some databases that specialize in carrying old archival, old, newspaper articles. Other databases specialize in primary sources, biographies, and histories. Other databases curate their own articles and can specialize in pro/con arguments and controversial topics.

Check out this video to learn about academic databases.

What is Peer Review?

When we talk about peer review we are basically saying, “how can we find articles that are credible?” The peer review system has been established over the years. With the assistance of professional associations, including the American Psychological Association and the Modern Language Association. Various publishers. Of journals. And universities have also added to the system of peer review.

Scholars and scientists want to be published in peer reviewed journals because it lends an authority and credibility to their name. When you are published in a peer reviewed journal, you have shown that your experiments matter to the scholars in your field of study.

"Let's say that as a librarian, I want to get published in a peer reviewed journal. I have to spend time formulating a research question and then spend time conducting the study. I will spend a lot of time writing up the findings and furthering the theories in my field of library science. Then I will go to different journals that specialize in library science, and I will apply to see if my article is good enough for them to publish. A team of scholars and librarians who are. Experts in the field will spend time reading. And sometimes verifying my study. They are going to see if it is correct accurate. And adds to the knowledge of our field. They also want to publish articles that will promote and sustain the reputation of their prestigious journal."

Colin Williams, LBCC Librarian

Peer reviewed articles follow the system of peer review, a structure established to ensure studies and findings are accurate and can be replicated. Peer reviewed articles help establish and maintain the reputation of scholars in a field and advance society's understanding of itself by challenging and expanding on existing theories.

Your professors are asking you to find peer reviewed articles because they want you to find the most credible and qualified studies. You don't necessarily want you going through the Internet and finding random web pages or blogs which may or may not have any credibility on the subject.

The peer review system helps you meet your professors’ expectations while also finding credible and qualified information.

Recognize Peer-Reviewed Articles

You can find peer-reviewed articles in OneSearch and in the academic databases. You can easily tell these systems you are looking for peer-reviewed articles by using the "Peer Review" limiter in any database you use.

Use the database's limiters to refine your search to peer-reviewed articles.

Nearly every discipline has corresponding peer-reviewed articles to which researchers submit their articles. The review processes are varied and oftentimes more or less stringent depending on the journal. The peer review process is lengthy, beginning with a researcher, or team or researcher, preparing their topics of study and then conducting the research through surveys, interviews, data analysis, and original methods. It culminates in the review and potential acceptance of the study into a peer review article, which is then published and made available to subscribers and libraries through academic databases.

Peer review articles are also called:

scholarly articles
academic articles

You'll be able to identify peer reviewed articles with insignia like these: