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Demystifying Peer Review

You may know that peer-reviewed journal articles are an important part of the research process. But do you really know what “peer review” is? What difference does consulting peer-reviewed scholarship make to your own research?

Definitions

This definition of the peer review process comes from the Association of College and Research Libraries:

Peer review is defined as obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from reviewers expert in the field who are not part of the journal’s editorial staff.

 

And this definition comes from William Badke's Research Strategies: Finding Your Way Through the Information Fog, 7th ed. (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2021), 14:

Most scholarly journals continue to use the gatekeeping process of peer review, by which submitted manuscripts are evaluated by scholars in the subject discipline in order to determine whether they are worthy to be published.

The Process

The Peer Review Process & steps used by the International Journal of Academic Research in Business, Arts & Science.

This is a good example of a fairly standard peer review process.