Q. What is peer review?
A. For an article to be published in an academic journal, it must be examined by experts in the field. They determine whether the information is reliable, well researched, and of interest to others who study that subject. For a more detailed explanation, watch the video below.
Q. Which journals have peer-reviewed articles?
A. 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.
Q. How do I know if an article is peer-reviewed?
A. Not every article in a peer-reviewed journal is a peer-reviewed article. Some scholarly journals also publish letters, conference notes, news items, etc. Look at the full text of the article you're interested in. A peer-reviewed article will show a string of dates, usually either near the abstract or at the bottom of the 1st page of the PDF version or at the end of the article, to indicate that the article was reviewed and usually revised.
Example: Manuscript received November 9, 2007; revised March 5, 2008. Published September 4, 2008.
Watch the ACS video "Publishing Your Research 101 - Ep.5
Ethical Considerations for Authors and Reviewers." See more ACS Research 101 videos.
In the traditional publication model, researchers (who are often publically funded) submit their articles to commercial publishers. This journal is then sold to libraries (which are also publically funded) where the research is accessible to the public. What if there was a way for publically funded research to be publically available for free? There is! Open Access!
Open Access (OA) is free, immediate, permanent online access to the full text of research articles for anyone, worldwide. It removes commercial interest from the distribution of research results and makes important information accessible to everyone. Science disciplines have been at the forefront of advocating Open Access to further research. To learn more about OA, visit the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), and the Public Library of Science (PLoS).
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