A peer reviewed (also called scholarly and/or academic) source has been reviewed by scholars in the same field to make sure that the information provided is accurate and worth publishing. Examples of peer reviewed journals include: American Nurse Today, Journal of Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, Journal of Higher Education, and many more.
If your professor asks you to use only peer reviewed sources, most databases (such as EbscoHost) will allow you to limit to just peer reviewed.
A non-peer reviewed source can include any of the following: newspapers (such as Wall Street Journal), trade journals (such as Engineering News Record), popular magazines (such as Cosmopolitan), and News/General Interest magazines/journals (such as Forbes). These types of publications are only reviewed by an editor before going to publication. They are also usually only reviewed for grammar or spelling mistakes. This makes them different than their peer reviewed counterparts.
