"Peer-reviewed," "scholarly," "academic," and "refereed" are often used interchangeably to describe journals that use some kind of rigorous reviewing process to verify the validity and originality of articles submitted for publication.

In many databases, you can limit your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed journals. This will omit articles from more popular magazines such as Time or People. But note that not all articles in a peer-reviewed journal are peer-reviewed. For example, editorials or book reviews are not generally peer-reviewed. 

Once you have input a search and have a list of articles, you may have the option to limit your results to show only popular, trade, or academic publications.

Example from OneSearch:

Example from EBSCO:

Example from ProQuest:

Need help distinguishing a peer-reviewed journal from a popular or trade publication? View our video tutorial or our tip sheet on peer-reviewed journals (see links below).