The peer review cycle consists of several necessary stages. The researcher comes up with an original idea and then starts looking for information to support the idea. The critical stage after the lit review is the actual research, collecting original data, making tests. The next stage is writing a manuscript. After the manuscript is ready, it should be sent to the editor who directs it to the peer reviewers. After the article is approved by the peer reviewers – it will be published. The editor’s role is to check the article’s contents. The article will be approved if it contains an original idea and is creative; the ideas of the article have to be put clearly for future readers. The editor determines what the journal will publish. The peer viewers are also called referees; they are independent experts. They will have to identify the article’s value and the accuracy of the research methods.
Peer-reviewed articles must contain the author’s credentials and are published by academic sources. A peer-reviewed work in the field of social or natural science will contain an introduction, background and theory, methods of research and discussion; it will submit results and form a definite conclusion – all these points will be separated as sections (Evaluating Information Sources, 2013). Peer-reviewed works are written in academic style; they begin with an abstract and have a reference page in the end. Since peer-reviewed works are published for the professionals to read – they can be easily found on the websites of universities or scholarly libraries, in academic databases, such as EBSCO or ProQuest.
The method of writing research papers called APA style is named this way because it was recommended by the American Psychological Association (APA) for writing papers in social sciences. The writers of articles in social sciences have to follow a list of instructions and standards. These particular standards were chosen because the APA style is based on two main requirements. The choices of tenses are based on the idea that the paper in social science is describing something that has already been stated as accurate. This is why past or present perfect tenses are used in the work’s citations.
The other fundamental rule is putting the year of publication. It has to be mentioned together with the name of the source or the author that is being cited. The names of the authors and sources have to be put in the reference list. To direct the readers’ attention to these sources, in-text quotations have to be used. As an example, in the article, I have summarized Hoff et al. (2013) noted that distracted driving caused by texting or speaking on the phone is a significant problem for public safety.
Another way of citing a source is a direct quotation. Direct quotes have to stand out of the rest on the sentence; this is why they are generally put into the quotation marks. When the writer of the paper is using direct words of the author of the source that is being referred to the quotation marks are necessary; otherwise, the quotation will be registered as plagiarism. As an example of properly put a direct quote, I will use the article I have summarized: the purpose of it was to “identify the frequency and perception of DDB in adults” (Hoff et al., 2013).
Reference List
Evaluating Information Sources. (2013). Lloyd Sealy Library. Web.
Hoff, J., Grell, J., Lohrman, N., Stehly, C., Stolzfus, J., Wainwright, G., & Hoff, W. S. (2013). Distracted driving and implications for injury prevention in adults. Journal of Trauma Nursing, 20(1), 31-34.