Professors often suggest that students include articles from scholarly, refereed or peer- reviewed journals as resources for their research papers. These articles are authored by experts in their field and reviewed by peers before getting accepted for publication. See below for a chart to help you distinguish between the two types of periodicals.
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Popular Magazine |
Scholarly Journal |
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Examples |
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Audience |
General readership |
Students, researchers, scholars, specialists in a particular subject |
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Language |
Popular language, geared towards the average reader |
Specialized vocabulary of a subject discipline |
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Content |
Feature stories, reviews, editorials, may report research findings as news |
Original research, theoretical issues, new developments in the subject discipline |
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Authors |
Staff writers (not always named), freelance writers |
Subject specialists named, degrees and academic affiliation usually given |
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Documentation |
Articles rarely include references or footnotes |
Meticulously documented; extensive references and/or footnotes |
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Appearance |
Highly visual, lots of advertising and photos |
Somber design, little advertising, mostly text with some graphs and tables |
