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Peer review refers to quality control in academic publishing. Peer review aims to assess the quality of articles submitted for publication in a scholarly journal. Before an article is deemed appropriate to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, it must undergo the following process:

•  The article's author must submit it to the journal editor, who forwards the article to experts in the field. Because the reviewers specialize in the same scholarly area as the author, they are considered their peers (hence "peer review").

•  These impartial reviewers are charged with carefully evaluating the quality of the submitted manuscript.

•  The peer reviewers check the manuscript for accuracy and assess the validity of the research methodology and procedures.

•  If appropriate, they suggest revisions. If they find the article lacking in scholarly validity and rigour, they reject it.

Because a peer-reviewed journal will not publish articles that fail to meet the standards established for a given discipline, peer-reviewed articles that are accepted for publication exemplify the best research practices in a field.

To find peer-reviewed articles, please go to search and find and limit it to peer-review. To learn how to do this have a look at our pace tutorial: Using the Library and Online Library - Search for online items (itcarlow.ie)