Peer-Reviewed vs Scholarly

I've had a lot of questions about how to find scholarly and peer-reviewed journals lately (What are they?, How do I find them?, etc). So I wanted to clear up a few questions.

What is a scholarly journal?
Simply put, a scholarly journal is a journal with articles that were written by scholars. Scholars are experts in a particular field of study. When scholars publish, they are writing in the hopes that others in the same field will read and discuss their work. Therefore, the articles and research produced will be more specific and in depth than articles intended for general audiences. Scholarly journals have strenuous guidelines for articles that are published. Research is closely scrutinized before publication, sometimes by an editorial board and sometimes through a process called peer-review.

Just what is this peer-review?
Peer-review is when a scholar submits his or her work to other experts in the field for review and critique. The purpose of peer-review is to discover and correct any flaws or biases in the research.

Peer-review started a long time ago when a bunch of Greek scholars used to write their theories down (everybody sing) "and pass them around" to other Greek scholars, who would comment and critique the new theories. This all lead to a healthy scholarly community where ideas were continually discussed and debated.  This process continues today, especially in Scientific fields where peer-review in an integral part of the scientific method of discovery (more on that in another post).

Can I trust scholarly and peer-reviewed journals?
For the most part, yes. But, as with all information, be cautious.  Just because an article has been reviewed by experts does not mean that the research is not flawed or biased in some way.  For Scientific research articles, pay attention to the methodology used, the statistics used to compute data, and whether conclusions drawn by the author are supported by the data.  For articles in the Humanities, look at the works cited list.  What sources did the author use, and are the sources reliable and unbiased?

Where do I find them?
A good place to start is Google Scholar. If you are unaffiliated with an academic, school or public library it is one of the few search engines that searches specifically for scholarly materials.

If you are associated with a library of some sort, they often have subscriptions to databases of scholarly materials. In Texas, most libraries have access to the TexShare databases which are funded in part by the State. The TexShare databases include resources that are useful for scholarly research.

For a giant list of databases (more than most libraries subscribe to), you can visit the University of Texas' Libraries database page.