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Librarians are available to help you with your research in all disciplines. We are happy to help you at any stage of the research process. You can call, contact us online, or meet with us in person or on Zoom.
Our librarians are happy to visit your classroom, either in person or by Zoom, to give a demonstration of how to navigate library resources and how to find high quality sources.
Please fill out our Library Instruction Request form to schedule a time for a librarian to meet with your class. If you have any questions, reach out to us at Ask a Librarian, or view the page linked below for more information:
Links to our most popular pages (will open in a new window):
Peer Review by SynLLOER, CC0 1.0 Public Domain.
Not all academic articles are created equal. The method by which an article was published or shared is an important factor to consider when choosing resources to cite in your work. This guide provides an introduction to two of the major categories of academic articles, Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Pre-Prints.
On the following pages, you will find:
There is also an opportunity to provide feedback and suggest new resources for this guide.
The purpose of this guide is to inform researchers about pre-prints and peer reviewed articles so that they can make informed choices about what kinds of articles they wish to cite in their work, and provide a resource to prospective academic authors deciding how they wish to share their own work with the broader academic community.
By the time you finish this guide, you will be able to:
No, many academic journals do not include peer review as a part of their publishing process. Always investigate the journal before citing an article in your work, especially if you have a requirement to use only peer-reviewed sources in your research.
To have their work published in an academic journal, authors submit a draft of their article (sometimes called a manuscript) to the journal where it will be approved or disapproved for consideration by the journal's editorial staff.
Many academic journals participate in the peer review process, which serves as a further level of quality checking by requiring experts in a subject to approve an article before it is published.
Some journals publish with Open Access, but others limit access to their articles behind paywalls and by requiring an institutional log-in for all users.
It can take a very long time to publish an article using the traditional model, but it is a model that is designed to try to ensure that only the most accurate, authoritative articles are added to the scholarly record.
Pre-prints (sometimes called e-prints) are scholarly papers that have not yet been through the peer review process and have not been published in an academic journal. Rather than being published in a specific edition of a journal, pre-prints are typically uploaded to a dedicated server and made available to the public.
Most pre-print servers are some level of Open Access.
Some pre-print servers require articles to be checked by an editor or moderator prior to publication, but this is different than the peer review process. If authors receive any feedback on their work, it typically is given informally by fellow members of their research community, and they can use this feedback to improve their work before submitting for publication in a traditional journal.
Posting an article as a pre-print is a much faster process than publishing one in an academic journal, and this can allow the most current research to be shared without delays.
The following research guides provide further information about how to use the services, tools, and resources available at Velma K. Waters Library:
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