Academic habits: peer-reviewed articles, part 1

Self-tutoring about academic habits: the tutor mentions the idea of peer-reviewed articles.

Sometimes you’re told to seek peer-reviewed articles for information. The idea is that if it’s peer-reviewed, it’s more credible. What about that?

A while back, I had to write a paper for an Artificial Intelligence course, for which they wanted some peer-reviewed articles. They were easy enough to find, but the best articles I found weren’t peer-reviewed.

In truth, I found the peer-reviewed articles to be more middle-of-the-road, rather than exceptional, both in content and in quality. (I’m sure there are very good ones, but in general, I find this to be the case.) Perhaps the reasoning goes as follows: Familiar ideas, delivered at a familiar level of quality, are comforting to people. They don’t attract attention – importantly, no bad attention. If you sign off on some great, but radical, idea, but someone else doesn’t like it, you might lose a funding opportunity.

When someone tells me they want peer-reviewed sources, I know what they mean. Do they know that I know?