This guide was created to support the Biological Sciences classes at Umpqua Community College.

For information about the Science, Math, and Engineering programs at UCC please contact:

Enrollment Services
541-440-4600
enroll@umpqua.edu

For questions about the guide and the resources it contains, please contact the guide owner below.

Scientific Papers & Peer-Review:

How do we make sense of scientific research?

 Current scientific research is typically published through each field’s academic journals. This allows results to be peer-reviewed (reviewed by other experts in the field for accuracy and authority).

So why read peer-reviewed scientific papers?

• They’re current—reporting the most up-to-date info.
• They’re replicable—good papers will explain the process used to find their results, which can be reproduced by other scientists.
• They show the reasoning behind findings & have conclusions—so readers can evaluate the results.

Open Access Journals are research publications which are available freely online without subscription barriers. Many of these journals use peer review to screen their published articles in the same way traditional subscription journals do.