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Occupational Health and Safety Research Guide

Finding Peer Reviewed Articles

The range of journals the Library subscribes to includes scholarly journals, trade publications, popular magazines and newsletters. Many scholarly journals are peer reviewed, and your instructors will expect you to be able to find this kind of information for your research papers.

What is Peer Review?

Peer review is the process through which experts in a field of study such as occupational health and safety assess the quality of articles that are submitted to a journal for publication. They differ from non-scholarly sources, which do not require this level of assessment and review prior to publication.

A number of databases the Library subscribes to which are useful for research in OHS provide limits which will isolate peer reviewed articles from other kinds of articles. Health and Safety Science Abstracts (HSSA), Academic Search Premier and Proquest Research Library support subject searches that limit results to peer reviewed articles.

You can also determine which journals are peer reviewed by consulting the electronic versions of the Ulrich's Periodical Directory or the Serials Directory. The full record for any journal listed in these directories indicates if it is peer reviewed.

The information provided at the following web sites will also assist you in distinguishing between the various types of periodicals and in evaluating their contents.