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Public Safety & Law Enforcement Leadership: Peer Review

Introductory guide to the University of St. Thomas library for students in Public Safety & Law Enforcement Leadership

Is it Peer Reviewed?

"Peer review" is the process through which experts in a field of study examine and assess the quality of articles before they are published. 

Sometimes the term "refereed" is used instead of "peer reviewed".

You can identify Peer reviewed journals using the following source:

Peer Review Process

Peer Review: Pro and Con

Pro

Con

Experts review research and argument

Double-blind: neither reviewer nor the  author knows the other

 

 

 

Can be closed to new ideas, methodologies, or questions

Community of scholars may be small, so often the reviewer and author know who each other is

Slow process: may go through several iterations before publishing. Can take over a year to publish

Possible solutions?

Publish to the Internet immediately after acceptance. Skip the print process, publish more quickly

Open review. Publish the names of reviewers before or after acceptance. Make reviewers responsible for their work

Publish reviews of the articles with the article. Researchers don’t have to reiterate their experiments, but readers can see what others have seen as weaknesses, flaws, or limitations of the research (Current Anthropology, Atmospheric and Chemistry Physics)

Video about Peer Review

The University of Massachuesettes at Amherst has a wonderful video on Peer Review. Research Video Tips: Peer Review