If the article is in a journal, you can see what the journal's standards for peer review are on their website.
Usually you can find this information at the top or bottom of the page, in the corners or near the page numbers.
Look by the authors' names for footnotes. Check online outside of the article to see if the credentials/workplace are accurate. For example, you can search an author's name and see if the school they claim to work at has a faculty page for them.
Scholarly articles tend to have standard sections, especially in STEM fields like medicine and health science. Take a look at the methodology (or methods) section which should include information on whether an article is based on original, scholarly, research (making it a primary source) or other studies (which would be a secondary or possibly tertiary source). For more information on common sections for scholarly articles scroll down to the Parts of an Article section of this webpage.
Scholarly articles will always have a reference or works cited list. Unlike newspaper or magazine articles, these tend to be rather long.
Still not sure? Ask a librarian for help!
A scholarly article is created by researchers for researchers. Its formatting and design reflects this purpose. The results, methods, and conclusions of the article are laid out consistently for easy reading by experts, and the language of the article tends to be technical and designed to speak to other experts in the field.
No, even with the peer review process in place, scholarly articles can still be flawed, poorly conducted, and biased. Check out the evaluating research page to learn some additional techniques for evaluating the quality of scholarly articles.
Not everything in a scholarly journal is peer reviewed. The following are some common source types that are published in scholarly journals, along with information about whether or not they are generally peer-reviewed.
These are opinion pieces. Although they tend to be informed opinions from experts in the field, these pieces usually aren't subject to peer review.
Theory pieces explore the underpinnings of care and health science. These pieces may or may not be subject to peer review depending on the journal, and they tend to not include an actual study or experiment.
Research articles are usually the evidence based practice and, in a peer reviewed journal, are subject to peer review.
These are pieces, usually for nurses, that discuss studies or research on new care standards, interventions, or practices. They may summarize or include a study or studies, but usually have a quiz and different formatting than a standard scholarly article. Check the journal's website to see if they have been peer-reviewed.
Most scholarly articles follow a common layout. The following are common headings/sections you will see in scholarly articles in the order you are the most likely to see them in. If an article uses different sections, feel free to reach out to the library for help determining if it is scholarly.
This is a brief summary of the article. Reading this is a great way to see if the article will fit your topic.
This section introduces the problem, question, or main idea and the bigger context of the paper.
This part discusses what other studies or information already exists around this topic. Not all papers will have literature reviews, though most will.
This might also be called Methods or something similar. It details how the study was conducted, who was in the sample, how the sample was taken, and what analysis was used to reach the results.
These are usually tables or statements about what the study uncovered.
This section is where the authors talk about what the results indicate or mean in the context of their research question.
The purpose of this section is to wrap up the paper, suggest future research directions, and it will typically address any limitations of their research. For instance, how well does the sample represent reality? How broadly can we apply these results? What could have affected the outcomes of this study?