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Peer-reviewed articles are articles that have undergone a rigorous review process.  An author submits a manuscript to a journal.  Journal reviewers, who are professionals and experts in the same field, evaluate the manuscript and determine whether or not the manuscript’s ideas, procedures, and content are worthy of publication on the basis of accuracy, validity, and rigor. Thus, the author’s peers review and evaluate the value that a manuscript may have for that discipline. In this way, a peer-reviewed article can represent the best research practices in the academic field. Peer-reviewed articles may also be called scholarly or refereed.

See Scholarly vs. Popular Articles for more information.