Planner's Toolkit: Research Tips for CRP Students
Key Scholarly Journals for Planners
Journal of UrbanismWe do not subscribe to this journal but you can request specific articles by searching and clicking on the GET IT link, which initiates an autofilled form through our Interlibrary Loan service.
Peer-reviewed articles are a subset of the scholarly article genre.
What are Scholarly Journals?
Characteristics of scholarly journal articles:
- written by and for researchers and professionals
- contain research projects, methodology, and/or theory
- generally subject to peer review, sometimes called "refereed"
- generally have extensive bibliographies or works cited
What is Peer Review?
The goal of Peer Review is to assess the quality of articles submitted for publication in a scholarly journal. Watch the following 3-minute video to learn more about the Peer Review process.
For alternative viewing, press play, then select the "CC" button for closed captions, or select the gear icon and select from the following: Playback speed, Subtitles/CC, or Quality. Video from Peer Review in 3 Minutes by NCSU Libraries.
Note: Not everything published in a scholarly journal undergoes the peer-review process. When limiting to "peer-reviewed", OneSearch catalog and library databases are filtering by the type of journal, and not distinguishing the variety of content in the journal, which can also include editorials and book reviews that are not peer-reviewed. Additionally, the peer-review and publication process often takes a year or longer, so it might be hard to find peer-reviewed articles for emerging topics/events.
- Peer Review GuideThis guide provides an introduction to the biases in systems of publication in academia. In order to critically engage with scholarship, scholars must be aware of the inherent problems within the system of academic scholarship. The guide will provide an overview to thinking about these biases in peer review, citation practices, the organization of scholarship within databases, and the language used to organize and product such scholarship.