Arts in Medicine: Scholarly & Peer Review

Scholarly journals are usually characterized by the following:

• Original research, bibliographies, or literature reviews
• The content explores theories or research findings
• Usually peer-reviewed
• Lengthy bibliographies and reference lists
• Published by academic presses

Trade publications are generally characterized by the following:

• Content written by professionals for others in their industry
• Practice based rather than research based content
• Information on industry trends, news, products, and techniques
• Are usually edited rather than peer reviewed
• Published by trade organizations

To find out if a journal is peer-reviewed (also known as refereed), you can use the Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory. Search by journal title, ISSN, etc. and look for the tiny referee shirt as an indicator.

Visiting a journal's website will also help you discover if it is peer-reviewed and what the review process is like. 

Some databases also offer filters that allow you to limit your search to peer-reviewed materials only, and some databases use icons to indicate which materials are peer-reviewed.