- A scholarly journal or periodical which requires that each article submitted for publication be judged by an independent panel of experts or scholarly/scientific peers.
- Articles not approved by a majority of these peers are not accepted for publication by the journal.
- Peer review is a well-accepted indicator of quality scholarship.
- Many scholarly journals use a process of peer-review prior to publishing an article, whereby other scholars in the author's field or specialty (his or her peers) critically assess a draft of the article.
- Peer-reviewed journals (also called refereed journals) are scholarly journals that only publish articles that have passed through this review process.