Graduate Study in Psychology Peer-Reviewed

¶ … Graduate Study in Psychology

Peer-reviewed journals: Their importance

The Internet has provided casual researchers and scholar-practitioners alike with unprecedented access to information. However, not all sources of information are created equal. There are many websites and Internet magazines that have biased, incomplete, out-of-date, or erroneous information in them. A research paper is only as good as its sources. Peer-reviewed journals provide access to high-quality information authored by reputable scholars in the field. The information in such journals is tested using some sort of empirical basis (in the social and natural sciences) and represents the mainstream beliefs of scholars in the field, rather than unsubstantiated opinion.

I know that the articles I downloaded are peer-reviewed because: 1. They identified themselves as journals; 2. Had volume and issue 'numbers'; 3. I used ProQuest rather than a general Google search, and specifically identified the fact I was looking for peer-reviewed scholarly journals; 4. When I Googled the names of the journals, the websites associated with them identified them as peer-reviewed sources of professional societies; and 4. When using my own 'common sense,' I noted that the articles were written by academics in a balanced, reasoned fashion, and cited peer-reviewed journals within their own texts. The articles' subject matter was detailed, specific, and scholarly. Also: 5. The scholarly credentials and potential conflicts of the authors were identified.