Behind the magic button: peer review

 

Students often tell us they’ve been asked to find ‘peer reviewed’ journal articles for an assignment. Librarians and academics sometimes talk about peer review in very general terms – ‘rigorous editorial process’, ‘evaluated by experts’, ‘reliable academic standard’ and so on. The language we use to talk about peer review  tends to be quite positive and therefore it’s no surprise that on campus there seems to be a general consensus that peer review is a good indicator of high quality information. Continue reading