What's in this article:
- What does peer review mean?
- How do I know which content on JSTOR is peer-reviewed?
- How do I narrow my search results to display only peer reviewed articles?
What does peer review mean and why is it important?
Peer review is the process by which academic content, usually articles that appear within academic journals, is vetted for accuracy and academic standards.
Identifying peer-reviewed content can serve as a way to more easily evaluate high-quality, scholarly content that has already been thoroughly reviewed and validated by other scholars in a given area of expertise.
Search Primary Sources on JSTOR
How do I know which content on JSTOR is peer-reviewed?
While the majority of journals collected in JSTOR are considered peer-reviewed publications, our archives also contain some specific primary source materials (such as some journals in the Ireland Collection and the 19th Century British Pamphlet Collection). These are examples of journal content that pre-date the current standard peer-review process. While all the information in JSTOR is held to a scholarly standard, not all publications technically qualify as peer-reviewed.
What content is NOT peer-reviewed?
- Content listed as "Primary Source" such as the historical journal content, images, and pamphlet collections
- Open content such as community collections, and open images
- Research reports
How do I narrow my search results to display only peer reviewed articles?
Currently, there is no way to search JSTOR for only peer-reviewed publications.
If you have questions concerning the academic legitimacy of a specific journal or book, your institution's librarian or course instructor will be the best resource to provide further details and answers.
Comments
3 comments
I can't think of a single reason not to feature an option to search peer reviewed material or at minimum mark items that are.
Hi Ryan! This was an intentional decision, but I'm going to reach out to my colleagues to find out information beyond this article for you. I'll update soon!
Hi Ryan! From our content management team:
Often, we don’t know the peer review status of individual articles, so it’s just not feasible for us to have a filtered search on the article level.
Putting labels on the issue level could be misleading as well as since not all contents within the issue will be peer-reviewed. For instance, some include editorials and commentaries. On the journal level, as the help text indicates, there is older content within the same publication that may not be peer reviewed in the standard process, and we wouldn’t be able to accurately reflect information about changes to a journal’s peer review process.
Additionally, going back in time--scholarly, highly-vetted, but older materials may be of an excellent standard for their time, but they were not subjected to a peer-review process.
I hope this helps! Thanks for your patience as we found an answer for you, but let me know if I can be of further assistance.
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