Government documents II

A student who is busy with an academic research project or thesis may ask us:

Are government documents scholarly or peer reviewed?

The appropriate answer would be:

While government documents and websites worldwide are usually reliable sources for research, the data they provide is not always classified as scholarly or peer-reviewed.

Internationally, government publications and websites provide vast amounts of material for different uses. Your ajarn will have let you know exactly what sort of information to look for, that would be best for the project or thesis.

If the student asks us for an example, we might cite the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP) based in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

Its website offers a great deal of information for download, meant for different sorts of readers. There are more popular items meant for the general reader, for instance

• Air Quality Index – A Guide to Air Quality and Your Health

This booklet explains EPA’s Air Quality Index (AQI) and the health effects of major air pollutants.

or

• AQI Forecasts: Your Advance Notification About Unhealthy Air

This brochure explains how to use the Air Quality Index, and how high levels of ozone and particle matter can affect your health. Learn where this pollution comes from and what you can do to protect yourself when air quality is poor.

These are meant to be read by average citizens and not for scholarly researchers. There are also more formal publications such as the following:

• Guidelines for Developing an Air Quality (Ozone and PM2.5) Forecasting Program

This report provides technical guidance to help air quality agencies develop, operate, and evaluate ozone and PM2.5 forecasting programs. This document provides: 1) Background information about ozone and PM2.5 and the weather’s effect on these pollutants; 2) A list of how air quality forecasts are currently used; 3) A summary and evaluation of methods currently used to forecast ozone and PM2.5; 4) Steps to develop and operate an air quality forecasting program and 5) Information on the level of effort needed to set up and operate a forecasting program. The intended audience of this document is project managers, meteorologists, air quality analysts, and data analysts.

If we see the word technical in the description of a text, even before we read it, that is a good sign that it is meant for serious professional readers. That means it can be referred to as a scholarly publication. These are directed at researchers, scholars and professionals in the field, usually with technical terms. Scholarly publications generally have footnotes and bibliographies, or lists of references.

The student may insist:

But does that mean it is peer-reviewed?

Our reply would be:

No, unless it specifically states that nothing was published on the website unless it went through a process of examination and approval by a group of specialists in the relevant field.

Since peer review takes a lot of time and trouble, if publications use this process to ensure the quality and seriousness of what is printed, they tend to announce it. Otherwise, what is published may just be a statement by a single expert. A peer-reviewed article means that people who know a great deal about a subject have tested different aspects of the article, from the way the research was done to whether the citations have been formulated correctly. This sort of checking process often includes some adjustments by writers. That is why it can take so long to publish a scholarly article in a peer-reviewed journal.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)