In the modern world, the quality of work is the most significant factor for any academic organization. Therefore, a research process for any scientific project or paper requires careful evaluation of information sources. There are multiple ways for obtaining necessary data, especially today, when everyone has access to the Internet. According to estimations, “original information is increasing at a rate of approximately 30 % a year, and most of this new information appears for the first time in digital formats” (Mateo & Foreman, 2013, p. 34). However, not all the information which can be found may be considered reliable. The results of scientific research can have important implications for people and the whole society. Therefore, a person needs to know the methods of evaluation of the quality and appropriateness of information sources to be able to rely on them. Experts distinguish numerous criteria, which can be used to determine the reliability of any work, including validity, currency, and classification of a text as “peer-reviewed”.
Peer-Reviewed Works as Determinant of Quality
Peer review is an estimation of a journal article by a group of experts in that sphere. The purpose of this procedure is the verification of the submitted ideas and research methods to guarantee the quality and credibility of the published texts. This technique is called “peer review” because the reviewers are considered the author’s peers as their specialization is in the same scientific area. The experts, also called “referees”, have a right to decide if an article can be published without any changes, needs improvements, or is not suitable for the journal.
There are certain features, which can help in determining whether or not an article is peer-reviewed:
- Publication in a scholarly journal;
- Official language and serious tone;
- The length of 10 pages and more;
- A small summary or an abstract on the first page;
- The presence of headings for introduction, literature review, conclusion, and other sections;
- Multiple quotations throughout the whole text and the reference list or bibliography at the end of the article (Lloyd Sealy Library, 2019).
There are also many other ways to ensure that a publication is peer-reviewed. For example, in certain databases, there is an option of limiting the search to scholarly articles. Moreover, a person needs to study the provided information and see if it is narrowly focused and well-researched, and relies on whether original sources or experts’ opinions, and not on personal perceptions. Peer-reviewed publications are also written for the audience with certain basic knowledge about the discussed subject. Finally, it can be useful to check the journal’s website to see if it describes itself as the one providing peer-reviewed publications. These features can help in determining whether an article corresponds to the requirements, and can be considered credible and authoritative.
Ways of Finding Peer-Reviewed Articles
In order to find peer-reviewed publications, an individual needs to search online libraries and databases as many of them include journals containing necessary materials. To determine whether an article is scholarly, a person should use the features listed above. For students and professors, it would be useful to access journals through their university’s library website and find suitable sources in those databases. An individual may also use Google Scholar to locate the abstracts of useful books and articles, which can be later found through the library. However, open articles on Google Scholar are usually from non-peer-reviewed journals. To find reliable publications, it is also possible to try typing the journal name plus “information for authors” into Google, and then search that material for any mention of a review process. It is important to determine if a source is reliable and well-researched for each article.
Criticism of Peer-Reviewed Articles
Articles that are published in peer-reviewed journals are considered more reliable and of a higher quality than those which are not reviewed. However, there are numerous critiques about the objectiveness of this method. Experts argue that reviewers can guess the personality of authors by looking at the references they use. The evaluation is also influenced by the referees’ scientific beliefs. There is also a massive critique in situations when reviewers miss serious mistakes in the author’s research and methodology due to heavy workloads and poor selection of experts for this job. One more frequently met objection is that the process of peer review is not transparent because reviewers are inevitably subjective and may be not open to new ideas, and cannot correctly estimate the research. From this perspective, peer-reviewed publications are generally accepted as unable to eliminate fraud and low-quality. Nevertheless, they continue to be treated as preferred sources for academic and scientific research as they help improve the quality of publications.
Validity as a Determinant of Quality
One of the important criteria for regarding information as being of high quality is validity. An article used as a basis for future academic research should be valid, and such studies always provide materials in a scientific manner. A publication can be regarded as “valid” when it contains accurately presented results and a well-designed structure, and its outcomes can be used for further research to draw more useful conclusions. There are three areas in which research’s validity can be threatened: internal, external, and construct or design validity.
Internal validity, also referred to as a study’s cause-effect validity, defines the degree to which a true cause and its influence on the results are identified in the research. Internal validity means “whether the outcomes observed in a study are due to the independent variables or experimental manipulations investigated in the study and not to some other factor or set of factors” (West, 2019, para. 5). To estimate the fact of internal validity, a reader should study opportunities of changes in the conclusions in case they are attributed to explanations, which are not taken into consideration in the publication. To prove there is a possible alteration of the outcome, an article should manipulate the possible cause, demonstrate that it is followed by a change in the results, and develop alternate explanations for the fact of this alteration (Price, 2019). In case the author does not provide such information in the article, it can be treated as invalid and having no credibility.
Externally valid articles are those which are easily generalized to the outside world. This type can be applied to “other settings (ecological validity), other people (population validity) and over time (historical validity)” (West, 2019, para. 13). To estimate the presence of external validity, a reader should consider whether the results apply to people with circumstances different from those of study participants. For this type of validity “findings that may be valid for one industry or group of people may not be valid for another” (Price, 2019, para. 16). Those researches, which choose random participants from diverse groups of the population, have many chances for facing external validity. In case of using more factors making a group distinct from the tested one, such as a study’s demographics, setting, and country of origin, the findings would be more valid for other organizations.
The last type is construct or design validity, meaning the research has adequately measured the principal concepts. This group refers to the degree “to which a variable, test, questionnaire or instrument measures the theoretical concept that the researcher hopes to measure” (West, 2019, para. 21). This type of validity may appear during different stages, including the planning, assessment, and data processing analysis. To distinguish design validity, it is important to give good consideration to the details about the method used for the research. There is a list of questions, which can help estimate the text:
- “Was the study conducted in an actual workplace, or in a laboratory?
- Were the participants actual employees, or random volunteers?
- Were external factors measured and controlled for? Did the authors consider, and address, criticisms of their conclusions?” (Price, 2019, para. 13).
In case research is held in organizational settings, they usually have less control of the quality, and any received results may appear to be a coincidence. Moreover, many academics negate the fact that their conclusions may have multiple alternative interpretations and not the ones they came to. To make successful research, a person must not only collect data, but study “the theoretical issues associated with explaining the relationship between the variables” (Curley & Vitale, 2011, p. 52). Therefore, it is important to ensure that the research is conducted properly, and they offer fair results. From this perspective, validity is an important criterion for determining whether the information is of high quality.
Currency as Determinant of Quality
Currency means the timeliness of the information, which is another important criterion for estimating the quality of research. Determining the date of publication is an essential aspect of evaluating information as it shows the significance and applicability of this source for the researched subject. There are five major indicators of the currency; they are dates of publication, of last update, of copyright, of patent, and of the cited sources. By using current sources, the author shows that they have the most up-to-date information at their disposal. However, currency can have different meanings for various disciplines, therefore, it is important to consider the context. In case the currency of the material impacts the validity, the author might need to use older sources, which is especially relevant for works, studying historical events. Nevertheless, for most of the scientific and academic research, the recent information is required as it gives the author additional guarantees about the quality of used sources and makes their work more credible and significant for the science.
Conclusion
Today, the quality of scientific or academic work is the most important aspect due to the increasing demands for credible significant research. Nowadays, people have access to numerous sources of information, however, not all of them are verified and contain true data. To determine whether a publication is of high quality, there are a few principal criteria to be considered: the validity and currency of a source, and its status as being peer-reviewed. The currency of information is its timeliness, which allows choosing the most recent sources in order to use up-to-date materials providing the information relevant for this period of time. Validity means that a publication is made in a scientific manner, and provides distinct structure and accurately presented results. The process of “peer-review” means verification of a journal article by a group of experts in the studied sphere, which allows presenting the audience with more objective information. Each of these criteria is helpful in determining the quality of a publication and helps to work on important research studies.
References
Curley, A. L., & Vitale, P. A. (2011). Population-based nursing: Concepts and competencies for advanced practice. Springer Publishing Company.
Lloyd Sealy Library (2019). Evaluating information sources: What is a peer-reviewed article? Web.
Mateo, M. A., & Foreman, M. D. (2013). Research for advanced practice nurses: From evidence to practice (2nd ed.). Springer Publishing Company.
Price, D. (2019). Understanding science: How to evaluate the research quality of scientific studies? CQ Net. Web.
West, J. (2019). Assessing research quality. Research Connections. Web.