Peer-reviewed is the highest level of academic or scholarly publishing. The quality of the articles is maintained through a review process conducted by experts prior to publication. Not all academic journals are peer-reviewed, but all peer-reviewed journals are academic.
Articles submitted to a refereed or peer-reviewed journal are examined by one or more people with expertise in the field with which the article deals. This process gives the scholarly community assurance that the information in the article is credible and original. Some disciplines require peer-reviewed status more than others.
Searching in a library database is very different than searching in Google. Here are a few tips.
1. You cannot use questions in a library database. Use only key terms to find what you are looking for. Make a list of keywords and try using only 2 or 3 of them on your first try. Here's an example:
2. You can limit your results to Peer Reviewed Scholarly articles. See this example:
You may want to use one of the Library Databases that are specific to Political Studies (and other Social Sciences). A few of these are listed below:
Canadian Major Dailies (linked below) is a trusted collection of Canadian newspapers from across Canada, In many instances the newspapers accessed are for the current day.