Peer-Reviewed Journals
Understanding the importance of peer-review of scholarly journals, particularly to a scholar-practitioner is extremely important. Journals play three basic roles in the scholarly community. The first role of peer-review of journals is to build a collective base of knowledge. The second major role is to validate the quality of research, and the final role is to convey or communicate specific information. Through the process of peer-review, editors can see to it that there are no methodological or reasoning flaws in the research (Walden University, 2012).
There are some ways to tell if the two articles I downloaded are from peer-reviewed journals. Basically, majority of scholarly articles are easily identified by their distinct structure, comprising of an abstract, which is a descriptive article summary written prior to the main text. The two articles that I downloaded contain an article, and are thus from peer-reviewed journals.
Another defining characteristic of peer-reviewed articles is that sources are always cited in form of bibliography or footnotes. In most cases, the bibliographies are long, and give citations of other scholarly sources for further investigation. Also, an article can be identified as peer-reviewed if it is written by a scholar in a particular field. This is an individual who has conducted broad research in the field under investigation. All the mentioned characteristics are applicable to the two articles that I downloaded.
Peer-reviewed journals are important to psychological scholar-practitioners because they play a vital role in advancing psychology profession. Research process is the driving force of psychology field. The evolution of developmental psychology has been advanced by research. However, for theories to be proven true, they have to be tested. Research may either disprove or validate the theories of psychological development. Peer-review process is critical because it ensures that all the information presented in the psychological research studies is congruent with the perspectives of other scholars in the field as well as accurate (Walden University, 2012).
References
Cleary, M., Horsfall, J., & Happell, B. (2012) Promoting mental health nursing:
employing undergraduate nursing students as assistants in mental health. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 21(1), 69-74
Haines, H., & Critchley, J. (2009) Developing the nurse practitioner role in a rural
Australian Hospital—a Delphi study of practice opportunities, barriers and enablers. Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing, 27(1), 30-36
Walden University (2012) 2011-2012 Walden University Student Handbook, retrieved
from http://catalog.waldenu.edu
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