"Academic journals are periodicals in which researchers publish their work. They are typically peer-reviewed journals, meaning that the work is reviewed and evaluated by other scholars prior to publication in an effort to ensure that only the best, most rigorously researched articles are published. Journal articles offer a window into the inner workings of a discipline. They demonstrate how social scientists formulate hypotheses, design empirical studies, analyze the observations they collect, and interpret their results." (Laubepin 2013)
Peer Review. The process of obtaining impartial opinions from the research and academic community in order to ascertain whether papers submitted for publication in journals are of a sustainable standard.
Referee. An independent expert who assists the editor of a journal in evaluating the acceptability of contributions submitted for publication.
Peer review is a term that generally applies to research articles in scholarly journals.
1. Scholar writes a paper and submits it to a journal.
2. Journal editor sends the paper to other scholars for anonymous review of quality and originality:
3. Editor uses the reviewers' comments and recommendations to accept the paper or to reject it. Most accepted papers require revisions to become a scholarly article.
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