Is your article scholarly?
What is "peer review", and is it the same as "scholarly"?
People often use "peer review" and "scholarly" interchangeably, but they aren't the same.
Peer review happens at the article level. A Journal is peer reviewed if its articles* are all peer reviewed.
An article has been "peer reviewed" if it has been reviewed by a group of the article author's peers prior to that article being published. Articles need to pass this peer review process before they are published, and sometimes articles have to undergo multiple rounds of review, with the author being required to edit anything from their grammar, to tables portraying data, to the structure of the article.
*Most journals only peer-review the research articles they publish, and not the editorials, commentaries, and reviews that they also publish as a part of each journal issue. These other types of publications are usually labeled within the journal, though not always in databases, and they are structurally different than research articles, not usually containing the intro, methods, results, and discussion sections that research articles contain.
How do you know if an article has been peer reviewed?
There is one way to check for sure:
- Look up the peer review process of the journal that published this article. The journal website should have a section discussing its peer-review process and should also list the members of its editorial board (those "peers" who do the reviewing). It's a sign of a bad journal if it doesn't provide this info.
What databases have peer-reviewed articles?
In practice, most people assume that research articles listed in library databases are peer-reviewed.
This is usually a safe assumption, however, some databases like CINAHL contain resources that are not peer-reviewed, like theses and news articles, though you can often filter non-articles out of your results.
But even then, the only way to be really sure is to look into the peer review process of each article's journal.
Find a scholarly article levels of evidence
Scholarly-ness and levels of evidence
Sometimes, in the health sciences and biomedical disciplines, "scholarly" means a certain level of evidence. Different types of research are considered to be higher or lower levels of evidence, and are sometimes arranged in a pyramid, called "the Pyramid of Evidence":
image: By CFCF -Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
In the above pyramid, Meta-Analyses are considered the highest level of evidence, with Case Reports being the lowest. Some other pyramids place animal research on a level below that.
What is the catch to "is your article scholarly?"
Caveats
Sometimes when instructors say "Find a scholarly article", what they mean is "Find primary or secondary research carried out by a qualified researcher".
Primary Research
Primary research (also known as original research) is a direct or first-hand account of research or an experience. In primary research, the author is usually the one who carried out and is reporting about their research. Randomized control trials, cohort studies, and case control studies, etc., are all primary research.
Secondary Research
Secondary research is a second-hand account. Usually, in secondary research, someone other than the original researcher is writing about the research. Meta-analyses and Systematic Reviews are secondary research because the authors collect existing research, summarize the findings, and report about that. It is a good idea to include both primary and secondary research in your study, and beginning with secondary research can give you a quick birds-eye view of the current state of a field.