Not all articles are created equal. There are specific qualities that distinguish articles published in popular magazines and newspapers, trade journals, and scholarly journals.  Be sure that the type of article you are using matches your professor's expectations and your research needs.

What does peer reviewed or refereed mean?

Peer Review is a process that journal publishers use to ensure the articles they publish represent the best scholarship currently available. When an article is submitted to a peer reviewed journal, the editors send it out to other scholars in the same field (the author's peers) to get their opinion on the quality of the scholarship, its relevance to the field, its appropriateness for the journal, etc.

Publications that do not use peer review (i.e. Time, Newsweek, Salon) just rely on the judgement of the editors. That's why you can't count on them for solid, scientific scholarship.

Peer reviewed articles are also called scholarly, refereed, or juried.

Created by North Carolina State University Libraries