My professor says I have to use a peer-reviewed article for my paper. What does that mean? Is “peer-reviewed” the same thing as “scholarly”?

Peer review is an important process in academic scholarship, especially in the sciences and social sciences. When a scholar submits an article to a peer-reviewed journal, the journal’s editor will determine whether it is worth sending through the peer-review process. If so, the editor will send the article to 2 or 3 experts on the topic covered in the article. Those experts read the article and determine if it is unique, accurate, and of high enough quality to be published. They make recommendations to the editor, and may request that the author make changes to clarify their argument. This process is meant to prevent bad science from being published, and to improve the quality of things that do get published.

Not every article in a peer-reviewed journal is peer reviewed. These journals also publish editorials, brief notes, letters to the editor, and essays that may not have gone through the peer-review process. Only research articles published in peer-reviewed journals have been peer reviewed. Peer-reviewed journals are sometimes also called refereed journals.

Scholarly journals are published by scholarly societies, universities, and colleges. All peer-reviewed journals are scholarly, but not all scholarly journals are peer-reviewed.

For more information, see Types of Articles.