Recreational Therapy: Understanding & Evaluating Sources

A Subject Guide for Recreational Therapy resources

Understanding Health News

The following list of resources was created by the U.S. National Library of Medicine to help you evaluate the reliability of health information reported in the news media.

About articles: types, parts, publication process

Evaluating Information

Peer Reviewed Articles

How to use Ulrichsweb database for peer-review status

Why use Ulrich's?

  • Find out if a particular journal is peer reviewed
  • Find out which databases index a journal

How to use Ulrichsweb to determine if an article is in a peer-reviewed journal:

1. Ulrich's can tell you whether a journal is peer-reviewed, not individual articles (but, research articles in a peer-reviewed journal will be peer-reviewed).

2. Go to Ulrichsweb database from a GVSU link, either on a subject guide or from the database list.

3. Enter the name of the journal/magazine (not the article or author!).

4. For example, I recently found this article through PubMed database. Notice the journal title is "Pediatric Obesity" (or Pediatr Obes for short):



PubMed screen grab
 



5. Next, go to Ulrichsweb and type in Pediatric Obesity. This is what the results look like:



Ulrich's Web


 

6. There are 2 versions of Pediatric Obesity, print and online. In either case, there is a "refereed" symbol (red circle) next to the journal name. This means the   journal is "refereed," which is another way of saying peer-reviewed.

     NOTE: not every article in a peer-reviewed journal may be peer-reviewed; commentary, news and opinion pieces usually are not peer-reviewed.

  • Last Updated: Oct 7, 2024 11:55 AM
  • URL: https://libguides.gvsu.edu/rec