Is Your Journal Scholarly?

For your research assignment, your instructor may have asked you to use articles from
scholarly journals rather than from popular magazines. The following checklist
summarizes major differences between scholarly journals and popular magazines.

Which type of source have you located?

Scholarly Journal Popular Magazine Trade/Professional

General Plain, serious covers; black Often a slick, glossy, eye- Often a glossy cover
appearance & white illustrations, charts catching cover; color displaying an industrial or
& graphs; little advertising photos; extensive professional work
advertising environment or product;
usually color ads and
illustrations

Audience Scholars, researchers, or Nonprofessionals, lay Practitioners in certain

professionals in a particular persons, general public business, profession, or
field of study or discipline industry

Author Always identified;
professional credentials
given; contact information
sometimes provided
Often not identified, or a
staff journalist or reporter
for the publication;
credentials usually not
given
Usually but not always
identified; often a
professional or specialist
working in the particular
field of interest

Article Often original research on
content a narrowly focused topic;
sometimes preceded by an
abstract (summary) of the
article; terminology used is
specialized, assumes some
previous knowledge of
subject by reader; sources
always cited, often in a
lengthy bibliography
Entertaining and/or
informative material of
interest to the general
public; articles and
paragraphs fairly short in
length; common language
used, assumes no previous
knowledge of topic; no
bibliography
Articles are fairly short (1-5
pages), have no abstracts,
cite few sources, and tend
to contain reports of
research or news in the
field, rather than original
studies, and use language
familiar to people in the
industry or profession
Publication Submitted articles are Articles are not peer Articles are usually not peer
process typically reviewed by the reviewed reviewed
author's peers (other
researches or experts in
the same discipline) and
may be rejected or
accepted, or sent back to
the author for revision prior
to publication

Purpose To add to the body of To inform or entertain the To communicate trends,

knowledge in a discipline, general public; produced developments, product
often by reporting original for profit; sold at information, concepts and
research or recent newsstands applications useful to those
experimentation; usually working in the profession or
not-for-profit; distributed by industry
subscription only to
individuals or institutions
(such as your university
library!)

To locate Use a specialized database Use a database that Articles in these

geared to a particular field,
such as PsycINFO
(Cambridge Science
Abstracts) or Medline
(Ovid); databases that
include a mix of scholary,
popular, and trade
publications may have an
option to limit your search
to articles in "peer-
reviewed," "refereed," or
"scholarly" journals
includes a wide variety of publications can be located
general-interest magazines using an interdisciplinary
such as Academic Search periodical database like
Premier (EBSCOhost) Academic Search Premier
(EBSCOhost), or one
focused on a trade or
profession, such as
ABI/Inform Suite for
business or ERIC for
education

Examples Harvard Environmental Law
Review; Journal of
Consumer Affairs; Journal
of Music Theory; Journal of
Social Psychology; New
England Journal of
Medicine; Physics Review
Consumers Digest; E: The Advertising Age, American
Environmental Magazine; Libraries, Education Digest
Natural Health; Psychology
Today; Rolling Stone;
Science News

Choosing a Database
When choosing a database, remember that the more specialized or the more narrowly
focused it is on journals in a particular discipline, the more likely it is to contain articles
from scholarly journals. Good examples of specialized databases are PsycINFO
(Cambridge Scientific Abstracts) or Medline (Ovid) and PreMedline (Ovid). Databases that
include a mix of popular and scholarly sources often have an option to select "peer-
reviewed," "refereed," or "scholarly" articles to restrict your search results to scholarly
journals.

Additional Tools for Judging Sources

Ask a librarian to help you locate the best databases that are most likely to contain
scholarly journals covering your topic. A standard library reference source, Magazines for
Libraries (Service Desk Z6941 .M23) describes more than 7,000 major scholarly journals
and popular magazines, and may be useful for determining whether a particular title is
scholarly or not. Ulrich's Web is an online directory of journals, magazines, and other
serials that indicates whether or not a title is refereed.

Created b y: S. Skekloff
Revised by: Reference & Information Services
Revised date: 2003-07-16