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The University of Massachusetts Amherst

CICS 305 Class Visit

How Can the Libraries Borrow Something for Me?

Interlibrary Loan (also abbreviated ILL) is a free service that allows patrons of the UMass Amherst libraries to borrow materials and to receive copies of documents from libraries beyond the Five Colleges. This service is available to current UMass Amherst students and current and retired UMass Amherst faculty and staff. You can borrow physical items or scans of articles and book chapters for items not available through the Libraries. 

  • Ensure that you have activated your ILL account with your NetID and password.
  • When searching in Discovery or another library resource, click "Request through Interlibrary Loan" to import the citation information into your request. 
  • Or, if you already know what you need, you can enter the citation information into the request form manually.

How Can I Find Out if an Article is Peer-Reviewed?

Peer Review is the standard for scholarly articles. It is part of the publication process where research is vetted by experts in a field prior to publication. It's aim is to ensure the rigor of methods and the veracity of results in studies and research projects. 

To find out if a journal is peer-reviewed, first check our Publication Finder to see if it is peer reviewed. This searches journals licensed by the Libraries only. 

If you can not find the journal there, search Ulrich's Periodicals Directory to see if a resource is "refereed". 

Another great option is to go directly to the journal itself and see what it says about the peer review it provides.