To tell if an article is peer reviewed, check two things in order: the journal, and then the article itself. A journal's own about page or editorial policy says how it reviews papers, and a library directory confirms it. The article then shows its own signs, such as the dates it was received and accepted. An editorial, a letter or a preprint fails the second test even when the first is passed.
EdCitation publishes this guide, drawn from eight university library guides, the Directory of Open Access Journals, two preprint servers, APA Style and one journal's own pages, all read on 27 September 2026. Each library guide is dated below by its own "last updated" line.
Three steps here are ones EdCitation does free, with no account. Find sources keeps a search to work published in journals, Cite a source builds the reference from the publisher's record, and Verify references confirms that each entry in a finished list is a real, published work.
What does peer reviewed mean?
A peer-reviewed article is one that experts in the same field read and judged before the journal accepted it. The University of Washington Libraries (2026) describes reviewers as scholars with knowledge of the article's subject, and Christopher Newport University Libraries (2026) notes that "peer-reviewed" and "refereed" mean the same thing.
What a journal promises varies. The DOAJ's minimum for an open access journal is at least two independent reviewers for each article, or two editors for arts and humanities journals, with the process stated clearly on the journal's website (Directory of Open Access Journals, n.d.).
Peer review is also younger than most students assume: written referee reports became routine at the Royal Society only in the 1830s, and Nature required referees for every paper only from 1973. That story is told in full in the history of peer review.
Is this journal peer reviewed? How to check
Read the journal's own description of its review process first, then confirm it somewhere the journal does not control.
Read the journal's about or editorial policy page
A real peer-reviewed journal says how it reviews, usually on a page called About, Editorial policies or Peer review. BMJ Open is a clear example. Its about page, read on 27 September 2026, gives its peer review model as open review, with reviewer and author "known to each other", and says the reviews are published online; it also reports a 2025 acceptance rate of 27% (BMJ Open, n.d.). A page that names the kind of review, who reviews and how the decision is made is a good sign. A page that says only "peer reviewed", with nothing behind it, proves little.
Look the journal up in Ulrichsweb, through your library
Ulrichsweb is a subscription directory of periodicals that most university libraries provide, and the library guides agree on how to read it. The University of Toronto Libraries (2026) describes it as covering more than 300,000 journals, magazines and newspapers. Search by the journal's title or ISSN, then look for the black-and-white referee shirt icon beside the title, which marks a refereed journal (University of Northern Iowa Rod Library, 2026; Boston College Libraries, 2025).
Watch for one trap. The University of Northern Iowa guide warns that a gold star in Ulrichsweb does not mean peer reviewed: it means a librarian reviewed the journal for the directory. We describe Ulrichsweb as these libraries do; we did not search it ourselves, because it needs a library login.
For an open access journal, check its DOAJ record
The DOAJ lists only open access journals that meet its criteria, including the two-reviewer minimum above, and its record for a journal describes that journal's review. A DOAJ listing is a floor, not a guarantee of quality, and an open access journal missing from it is not automatically bad. How to tell a real journal from a predatory one, with the DOAJ, COPE and Think. Check. Submit. criteria, is covered in how to choose a journal and avoid predatory ones, and is not repeated here.
What a database's "peer reviewed" box does and does not do
Library databases offer a checkbox for peer-reviewed or scholarly results, and Eastern University's Warner Library (2024) recommends starting there. The box works on the journal, not the article. Boston College Libraries (2025) warns that limiting a search to peer-reviewed journals does not mean every result was peer reviewed, because academic journals also carry editorials, reviews and letters.
How can I tell if an article is peer reviewed?
Once the journal passes, look at the article itself, because not everything a journal prints goes to referees.
| Sign | What it tells you | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The journal's about or policy page names its review | The journal claims peer review and says how it works | The journal's own site; BMJ Open shown above |
| A referee shirt icon in Ulrichsweb | The directory records the journal as refereed; a gold star does not mean this | University of Northern Iowa Rod Library (2026) |
| A DOAJ record | An open access journal met the DOAJ's criteria, including two reviewers per article | Directory of Open Access Journals (n.d.) |
| Received, accepted and published dates on the article | The article went through a submission and acceptance process | New Jersey Institute of Technology Library (2026) |
| Introduction, methods, results and a long reference list | A research article, the kind journals send to referees | New Jersey Institute of Technology Library (2026) |
| Labelled editorial, letter, news or book review | Usually not peer reviewed, even in a peer-reviewed journal | Christopher Newport University Libraries (2026) |
| A preprint server's name, such as arXiv or PsyArXiv | Not peer reviewed by that server | arXiv (n.d.); PsyArXiv (n.d.) |
| "In a journal" in EdCitation's Find sources | Published in a journal, the closest sign an index can give | EdCitation's filter panel |
Received and accepted dates, in a real article
The New Jersey Institute of Technology Library (2026) calls "received", "accepted" and "published" dates a quick way to identify peer-reviewed research, and the UC San Diego Library (2026) lists dates of submission, review and acceptance among the marks of the process. A real example: Scott et al. (2019b), a study of social media use and sleep in 11,872 UK adolescents, shows on BMJ Open's article information page that it was received on 23 April 2019, revised on 16 July, accepted on 19 July and first published on 22 October 2019. The article's own notes add "Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed", and the page links to its review history.
A procedure you can run on any article
- Search for the topic in EdCitation's Find sources with In a journal ticked, so that preprints, theses and book chapters drop out.
- Open the journal's about or editorial policy page and read how it reviews.
- Confirm the journal in Ulrichsweb through your library, or in the DOAJ if it is open access.
- Check the article for received and accepted dates, and for the structure of a research article.
- Make sure it is not an editorial, letter, news item or book review.
- When the list is finished, run it through Verify references to confirm every entry is real.
What is not peer reviewed, even in a peer-reviewed journal?
Editorials, news items, book reviews and letters to the editor are published in peer-reviewed journals without going through formal peer review, as Christopher Newport University Libraries (2026) puts it. The University of Washington Libraries (2026) adds short news briefs and reprinted conference proceedings, and says to confirm that the item is a full research article.
Preprints
A preprint is a paper posted publicly before, or without, peer review. The servers say so themselves. arXiv (n.d.) states that its moderation "is not a peer-review process"; volunteer moderators check that a submission suits the archive, and cannot give feedback on it. PsyArXiv (n.d.) defines a preprint as a draft made public before publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
The same study can exist in both forms. The Scott study was posted on PsyArXiv on 19 February 2019 (Scott et al., 2019a), eight months before BMJ Open published the reviewed version. APA Style (American Psychological Association, 2020) says to cite the final published version where you can, and to cite the preprint only if that is the version you used.
Peer reviewed vs scholarly vs popular: what is the difference?
Peer reviewed is the narrowest of the three. Eastern University's Warner Library (2024) puts it plainly: every peer-reviewed article is part of the scholarly literature, but not every scholarly article is peer reviewed. Christopher Newport University Libraries (2026) gives the reason: some scholarly work passes only an editor's review.
- Peer reviewed. Judged by experts in the field before acceptance. A research article in a refereed journal.
- Scholarly, not peer reviewed. Written by experts for experts, with references, but checked by an editor only, as in a journal that uses editorial review.
- Popular. Written by journalists for the general public, in plain language, and rarely with formal citations (New Jersey Institute of Technology Library, 2026). The UC San Diego Library (2026) notes that editors review popular articles, not a panel of experts.
When an assignment asks for peer-reviewed sources, scholarly work checked only by an editor may not count. When it asks for scholarly sources, a peer-reviewed article always does. If the brief is unclear, ask the person who set it.
How do I find peer-reviewed articles with Find sources?
EdCitation's Find sources is the best place to start a search for peer-reviewed articles, because it searches about 300 million published works and lets you keep the search to journals before you read anything. Its Where it was published filter offers three boxes: In a journal, In conference proceedings and Free to read (open access). Under the first, the panel says exactly what it can promise: "The closest reliable sign of peer review. No index records peer review itself." That is the honest position: peer review happens inside a journal, and no index records it paper by paper. The quick set Journal articles, last 5 years ticks it for you and limits the years as well.
What came back on 27 September 2026
We searched social media use and adolescent sleep three ways. All three runs were answered from the search's back-up index, used while the full index is busy, which cannot apply every filter and says which ones it skipped.
- Without the filter: 6,172,956 results. The first page held 90, of which 52 were articles, 19 preprints, 6 datasets, 6 book chapters and 3 dissertations. The first result was the PsyArXiv preprint of the Scott study.
- With In a journal: 4,574,777 results, and all 100 on the first page were journal articles. The first result was now the BMJ Open version of the same study, cited 172 times. No notice came back, so the filter was applied.
- With In a journal and Free to read: the search reported the open access filter as unsupported, which the page shows as "The full index is busy, so these filters are not applied right now: Open access." The journal filter still held; the open access one was not applied on that run. Times cited 50+ was reported the same way ("Minimum citations").
The filter cannot remove a journal's own editorials and letters, since they are published in a journal too. Steps 2 to 5 of the procedure above still apply.
Citing the two versions, and what to fix by hand
Cite a source built both entries from Crossref's records. From the DOI 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-031161, in APA 7:
Scott, H., Biello, S. M., & Woods, H. C. (2019). Social media use and adolescent sleep patterns: Cross-sectional findings from the UK millennium cohort study. BMJ Open, 9(9), Article e031161. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-031161
One fix: the record writes "millennium cohort study" in lower case, and a named study keeps its capitals, so it becomes "UK Millennium Cohort Study". From the preprint's DOI, 10.31234/osf.io/z7kpf, it gave:
Scott, H., Biello, S. M., & Woods, H. (2019). Social media use and adolescent sleep patterns: Cross-sectional findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/z7kpf
It names the archive, PsyArXiv, as APA Style's own preprint examples do, rather than the Center for Open Science that runs it. No retraction was reported for either.
Checking the list with Verify references
We pasted four entries into Verify references: the two above, Bohannon's 2013 Science article typed with the year 2014, and a survey we made up.
- The BMJ Open article came back verified: "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches."
- The preprint came back verified with the same words. Verified means the work exists; it says nothing about whether it was peer reviewed.
- Bohannon came back "check this": "The work was published in 2013, not 2014; the record has no date in 2014." Crossref holds two DOIs for that article with the same title, author and pages; the check matched 10.1126/science.2013.342.6154.342_60, and the one below is 10.1126/science.342.6154.60.
- The invented survey came back not found: "No publisher's or registry's record matches this reference."
A lookup that fails is reported as could not check, never as not found.
What is free and what is paid
Find sources, Cite a source (APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver, with a retraction screen) and Verify references are free with no account. References from a file, in Pro at $8 a month, reads a whole paper, checks every reference and matches each in-text citation to its entry. The Max plan, $24 a month, adds the Library of books. EdCitation never writes any part of a paper: it looks each reference up and never composes one. For the wider search, see how to find sources for a literature review fast.
Quick questions
How do I know if a journal is peer reviewed?
Read the journal's about or editorial policy page for how it reviews, then confirm it in Ulrichsweb through your library, where a referee shirt icon marks a refereed journal, or in the DOAJ for open access journals.
Is scholarly the same as peer reviewed?
No. Every peer-reviewed article is scholarly, but some scholarly work is checked only by an editor, not by outside experts.
Are preprints peer reviewed?
Not by the server. arXiv says its moderation is not peer review, and PsyArXiv calls a preprint a draft shared before journal publication. Look for a published version and cite that where you can.
Can EdCitation tell me if an article is peer reviewed?
Not for each article, because no index records it. The In a journal filter in EdCitation's free Find sources keeps a search to journal publications, the closest sign there is, and the journal's own page and the article's dates do the rest.
Does a received and accepted date prove peer review?
It is a strong sign that the article went through submission and acceptance, which library guides use to spot peer-reviewed research. Confirm the journal's review process on its own page as well.
References
- American Psychological Association. (2020). Preprint article references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/preprint-article-references
- arXiv. (n.d.). Moderation. https://info.arxiv.org/help/moderation/index.html
- BMJ Open. (n.d.). About. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/pages/about
- Bohannon, J. (2013). Who's afraid of peer review? Science, 342(6154), 60–65. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.342.6154.60
- Boston College Libraries. (2025, November 24). Finding peer-reviewed articles. https://libguides.bc.edu/c.php?g=44431&p=281216
- Christopher Newport University Libraries. (2026, September 4). Refereed or peer reviewed or scholarly. https://cnu.libguides.com/articlesearching/peerreview
- Directory of Open Access Journals. (n.d.). Guide to applying. https://doaj.org/apply/guide/
- Eastern University Warner Library. (2024, September 27). How do I distinguish between scholarly (peer-reviewed) vs. popular articles? https://libguides.eastern.edu/c.php?g=526585
- New Jersey Institute of Technology Library. (2026, July 30). Is it scholarly (peer-reviewed) or popular? https://researchguides.njit.edu/evaluate/peervspop
- PsyArXiv. (n.d.). FAQ: Frequently asked questions. PsyArXiv Blog. https://blog.psyarxiv.com/faq-frequently-asked-questions/
- Scott, H., Biello, S. M., & Woods, H. (2019a). Social media use and adolescent sleep patterns: Cross-sectional findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/z7kpf
- Scott, H., Biello, S. M., & Woods, H. C. (2019b). Social media use and adolescent sleep patterns: Cross-sectional findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. BMJ Open, 9(9), Article e031161. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-031161
- UC San Diego Library. (2026, September 22). Scholarly? Authoritative? Peer-reviewed? Which one do I have? https://ucsd.libguides.com/c.php?g=773027&p=5628668
- University of Northern Iowa Rod Library. (2026, July 15). Is it peer reviewed? https://guides.lib.uni.edu/secondary-historical-sources/is-this-journal-peer-reviewed
- University of Toronto Libraries. (2026, August 9). Peer reviewed or refereed journal articles. https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/c.php?g=250578&p=5222740
- University of Washington Libraries. (2026, September 9). Peer reviewed journals & articles. https://guides.lib.uw.edu/c.php?g=344241&p=2319728