Peer review, also called refereeing, is a prepublication process used by most scholarly journals. Before an article is accepted for publication, the editors will send the manuscript to outside experts for review. The reviewers will then provide feedback on the quality of the research in the paper. The author can usually make revisions and resubmit the work for final acceptance.
Peer-reviewed articles are the gold standard for academic research. For students, it means that other experts have read and approved the methods and conclusions of the work, providing extra authority to the piece.
Use subject databases that specialize in the field, which are more likely to include peer-reviewed journals. Many databases also include a "peer-reviewed articles only" checkbox.
Get a quick introduction to peer review, find advanced materials, even learn about what happens when peer review doesn't happen at Scrutinizing Science from Understanding Science: How Science Really Works.
A quick way to tell if an article is peer-reviewed is to look for "submitted/revised/accepted" dates on the first page of the article. These tell you the dates the article went through the various steps of the peer-review process.
If the articles does not display clear received/revised/accepted dates, the most authoritative place to look is the journal's homepage. Do a Google search for the name of the journal. Look for a description of the journal that says "peer-reviewed" on its homepage. Also, look at the information for journal editors, article authors, or review policy pages. These will often detail the peer-review process for each journal, including which sections of the journal are reviewed and which are merely edited.
