Are peer-reviewed journals really peer-reviewed?

in this post, you can understand the are peer-reviewed journals really peer-reviewed

Professors are often very specific that their scholars find articles from journals that are peer reviewed. Often terms such as "Peer Reviewed" and "Scholarly Journals" are the kind of words used to describe these kinds of journals. Do we actually know what are actually these kinds of journals?

Peer Reviewed, refereed or scholarly journals have articles that are written by experts and are then further reviewed by many other experts before they are given the approval for publication. This ensures quality of the journal and has scientific validity with reliable conclusions. In most of the cases, the review process is blind, which means the reviewer is oblivious to the details about the author. This is so done to further authenticate that the paper qualifies on its own merit.

As a writer, you need to determine whether a journal qualifies as being a peer reviewed journal. Firstly, you have to identify which journals are peer reviewed. This can be done by four methods:

Limiting your search in the database that is for peer reviewed journals only

Online, there are few databases that give you this alternative to narrow down your search for peer reviewed journals only. Few of these databases are: Academic Search Complete, ulrichsweb.com etc.

Another technique to confirm whether the journal is peer reviewed or not is to check for the symbol next to the title of the journal.

Most often the website of the journal highlights very significantly if they are peer reviewed.

You may still find a lot of journals that fake peer review and lack authenticity. Some amount of caution is important from the end of the author before finalising the journal on the pretext that it is peer reviewed.

Further confidence can be gained by:

Checking the indexing of the journal. If it is indexed in Inderscience, Elsevier, Scopus or similar category journals, it can be trusted to be genuinely peer reviewed. It takes three years for a journal to perform before it gets indexed in one of the good databases.

Is the journal listed in directory of open access journals, if it falls in that category this listing also gives it repute.

Even if the journal asks for fee, which can be acceptable, it needs to be be paid upon acceptance and not submission.

Be cautious of predatory journals, that claim to be peer reviewed but may be they deceive genuine but naive researchers.