Emergency Management: What is a Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed article?

Is It a Scholarly Peer Reviewed Research Article or Isn't It?

What is a “peer reviewed” or a “refereed journal”?  A peer reviewed or refereed journal article has been reviewed by other scholars for accuracy before being accepted for publication.  Most databases will allow a researcher to restrict their search to these types of journal articles.  There is also something called an “empirical” research article.  An empirical research article is one which reports research based on actual observations or experiments.  

Some of the following characteristics are found in most scholarly peer reviewed and empirical research journal articles:  

• Introduction or Literature Review
• Theory or Background
• Subjects
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• It should have a bibliography or a list of references at the end of the article.
• It will probably have an abstract (summary) at the beginning of the article.
• It may list the author’s credentials as to who they are and their qualifications to write on this subject.

Here is an example of a scholarly peer reviewed empirical research journal article: