Approach to Identifying and Analyzing Peer-Reviewed Research

Approach to Identifying and Analyzing Peer-Reviewed Research

When identifying and analyzing a peer-reviewed article, I scrutinize if the article meets the following criteria: Published in a scholarly journal; Has an abstract on the first page; Is organized by headings such as introduction, literature review, methods, and findings; Has citations throughout the text and a reference lists at the end; Has credentials of the authors that are affiliated with a university or research institute (Kulczycki et al., 2019). In addition, I analyze an article by assessing if the article’s topic is narrowly focused and explored in depth. I analyze whether the article has a specific focus on contributing new, original research in a narrow area of the subject. Furthermore, I look at the language of the article. Peer-reviewed research should use technical and formal language and contain complex ideas and arguments, an objective tone, and an analytical perspective (Kulczycki et al., 2019). Lastly, I assess whether the article has a plain appearance with minimal use of colored, graphics and images.

Strategies That I Found Effective in Finding Peer-Reviewed Research

Some strategies that I found effective in finding peer-reviewed research include using the library’s research databases and limiting the search to scholarly, peer-reviewed articles (López-Cózar et al., 2019). The databases have a feature for peer review limiter option, which limits the retrieved articles to only peer-reviewed journals. Another strategy is using Google Scholar where one can search an article by title or author. Google Scholar enables one to search diverse sources from one site (López-Cózar et al., 2019). It also helps to retrieve articles, books, theses, and abstracts.

I purpose to use the PubMed database to retrieve peer-reviewed research. Journals in PubMed are peer-reviewed and are relevant to my area of study since it contains journals on health, biomedicine and, related disciplines (Kang et al., 2021). PubMed is also suitable because it allows one to search across various NLM literature resources, such as PubMed Central (PMC), MEDLINE, and Bookshelf.

Conclusion

Peer review helps to ensure that scientific journals answer significant research questions and come to accurate conclusions based on professional experiments. An article can be considered appropriate for professional practice if it meets the CARP test, including currency, authority, relevance/reliability, and purpose. My approach to analyzing a peer-reviewed article includes looking at the publisher, abstract, citations, references, authors’ credentials, topic focus, and appearance. One can find peer-reviewed articles by limiting the search to peer-reviewed in the library databases and using Google Scholar.

References

Kang, P., Kalloniatis, M., & Doig, G. S. (2021). Using Updated PubMed: New Features and Functions to Enhance Literature Searches. JAMA, 326(6), 479-480. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2021.12021