Are all or most of the library items peer reviewed?
Answer
Not all items in the library are peer reviewed; however, resources from the library are considered to be accurate and authoritative in their information and acceptable to use for many course assignments. For example, the Online library has several video collections on educational topics, psychology and more. These videos are created by experts and professionals in their respective fields, but these videos do not go through a peer review process. Another example would be collections of encyclopedias and dictionaries in our Credo Reference database.
A peer reviewed journal article is one that experts in that particular field have read and approved for publication. This means that the research presented in the article is sound and of high quality. Not all articles in a peer reviewed journal go through the peer review process (such as book reviews, editorials and news items). Sometimes the term “refereed” is used instead of peer review.
Many databases allow you to limit your search to peer reviewed or scholarly journals. You will find this option in most ProQuest and EBSCO databases. See the link to Peer Reviewed Articles from the Research 101 Guide for more information.
Because databases are constantly adding newly published journals, it is difficult to give a percentage of actual peer reviewed documents, but we can say that there are over 30 databases in the Online Library that contain peer reviewed journals.