Research Guides: HIST 150: The Family in Premodern Europe (Spring 2024): What is Peer Review?

Peer Review?

What IS "peer review" and why does it matter?

Now peer review is a process by which academic work is evaluated and improved before publication.

An article or book is submitted for review to an editor, who then sends it to 2 or 3 external reviewers, who in turn provide feedback and comments. They return the piece to the editor with notes, who then sends it back to the author. This process may repeat. This process improves the quality of a work, but also means publication takes Years after the work is written.

Tips for determining whether a work is peer reviewed:

Who is the publisher?
Is it in a peer reviewed journal?
Did you limit your search to "peer reviewed" material in the database?
Who is the author?
Does it list its sources?

Scholarly VS Peer Reviewed

There is a different between "Scholarly" and "Peer Reviewed" sources.

Scholarly sources are a broad category of materials created by scholars and academics, and it includes peer reviewed material, but not all scholarly work is peer reviewed.

Examples of non-peer reviewed scholarly works:

Encyclopedias
Lectures
Unpublished Theses & Dissertations
Podcasts
Opinion piece
Review articles
Self-published books and articles.

These resources can be a great starting point and can direct you toward useful materials, but they are not peer reviewed.

Examples of Peer Reviewed Material

BOOK: Fleming, Peter. Family and Household in Medieval England. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Drawing upon a wide range of historical research, Family and Household in Medieval England offers a stimulating and engaging introduction to the formative period of one of the central institutions of western society. The family and household together provided the basic unit of social organisation in the Middle Ages, and this period saw the emergence of many aspects of modern life, not least the marriage service and its attendant ceremonies.
ARTICLE: SPRECHER, TIFFANY D. VANN, and RUTH MAZO KARRAS. “The Midwife and the Church: Ecclesiastical Regulation of Midwives in Brie, 1499-1504.” Bulletin of the history of medicine 85, no. 2 (2011): 171–192.
At the turn of the sixteenth century in Paris, midwifery was an emergent profession regulated by the church. This article analyzes fourteen entries in the Registre de causes from the archdeaconry of Brie, 1499-1504, within the context of midwives' relationship with the church. It suggests that midwives were important appendages of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. Midwife regulation was one aspect of the French church's attempts to maintain its autonomy against secular powers. Regulation by the ecclesiastical bureaucracy provided midwives with professional advantages and disadvantages. The ecclesiastical bureaucracy played a vital role in creating and sustaining midwifery as a profession, but also circumscribed midwives' practices. Overall, however, bureaucratic control was unsystematically applied, and midwives were often left to negotiate their own professional and social positions.
CHAPTER: Schneider, Norbert F, and Michaela Kreyenfeld. “A Historical Perspective on Family Change in Europe.” In Research Handbook on the Sociology of the Family. United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2021.
Chapter in
Schneider, Norbert F., and Michaela Kreyenfeld. Research Handbook on the Sociology of the Family. Edited by Norbert F. Schneider and Michaela Kreyenfeld. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021.

NOTE: Book Review articles aren't peer reviewed

Book reviews, even when included in a peer-reviewed academic journal, are not considered peer reviewed sources.

They are, however, useful for pointing to books on your topic!

Dyer, Christopher. Review of “Family and Household in Medieval England.” in The English Historical Review, 116(469), 1254–1255.
"Family and Household in Medieval England" by Peter Fleming is reviewed.