Checking for Peer Review Worksheet

How can we check if a scientific article is reliable? Well, the easiest way is to make sure the author is citing peer-reviewed journals. Peer-reviewed journals are the gold standard for scientific information, and in this video, I show you how to spot them in everyday articles.
This worksheet is designed to accompany my YouTube video on Checking for Peer Review.
The worksheet includes:
  • Space for students to take notes with prompts based on Harvard's Project Zero thinking routine 'Take Note'.
  • Simple recall questions to reinforce the steps in the process of peer review.
  • Directions for students to check whether information on specific websites is based on peer-reviewed sources.
  • More challenging discussion questions on when it could be preferable to use other reliable sources of information, such as government agencies or interviews with experts, instead of peer review.
  • A list of highly regarded peer-reviewed journals, sorted into discipline, chosen based on their impact factor according to Google Scholar.
  • Directions to find information online that IS and IS NOT based on peer-reviewed sources, and to discuss what they find in small groups.
  • An answer key for questions that are not specific to individual students.

​Click below to download the worksheet from Google Drive.
© Luke Scholtes February 2023