Periodicals

Scholarly Journals, Popular Magazines, Trade Journals and Newspapers: What’s the Difference?

	Scholarly/Academic	Popular Academics	Trade Journals	Newspapers

Author is usually...	Scholar in field, academic or researcher	Staff writer, journalist, often a generalist	Staff writer, journalist often with expertise in field	Staff writer, journalist
Credits sources?	Always many references and/or footnotes	Rarely cites sources, Original sources may be obscure	Rarely cites sources	Rarely cites sources
Structure of articles	Long (10+ page) articles with sections such as: Abstract, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion	Brief articles, unless feature	Brief articles, unless feature	Brief articles, unless feature
Look & Feel...	"looks like a book" No color, no ads	Glossy, graphics, full page advertisements	Glossy, graphics, advertisements, many are large format	Newsprint
Finding these types of articles: Databases to Use	General topics: Gale PowerSearch - Choose More Search options -> peer reviewed More specialized: JSTOR, ScienceDirect and Web of Science, EBSCO Business Source Premier are a few more.	Gale PowerSearch - scan for shorter articles, or look at magazine titles.	EBSCO Business Source Premier See more specialized trade databases such as IEEEXplore.	LEXIS®-NEXIS® Academic and other news databases.

Beware of Book Reviews

Book reviews often appear in scholarly journals, although they provide a critical review of a book, they may not meet your professor's requirements of using a scholarly work. Check the Library Catalog to find the actual book that's been reviewed.

Unsure of a Source? Ask at Reference Desk or your Professor.

Publist.com is a great source for tracking down periodicals by topic area. It will also allow you to determine whether or not an item is refereed, scholarly/academic.

Analyzing Citations from Online Databases

What Type of Source is this Result from the InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP database?

Folkies forever. (increasing popularity of folk music) Avery Comarow. U.S. News & World Report. June 2, 2003 p72 (570 words) Text | FullTextFinder

Clues to look for:

Headline or article title - word choice in popular magazines
Title of magazine/journal
Length of article (usually > 500 words is less than one page long)

Watch out for book reviews:

The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World. (book reviews) Chris Goertzen. Ethnomusicology Fall 1991 v35 n3 p421(3) Citation | FullTextFinder

Scholarly or not?

Roll On Columbia: Woody Guthrie, Migrants' Tales, and Regional Transformation in the Pacific Northwest. John R. Gold. Journal of Cultural Geography. Fall-Winter 1998 v18 i1 p83 (5829 words) Text | 15 full pages PDF | FullTextFinder

Both Ethnomusicology and Journal of Cultural Geography are considered scholarly journals.

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Last modified: Mar 20, 2008, 10:11 EDT