George C. Gordon Library

Periodicals

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

Scholarly/Academic Popular Magazines Trade Journals Newspapers

[ Chemical Engineering Journal ]

[ Newsweek ]

[ Advertising Age ]

[ WSJ and NYT ]

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 even in online versions

Glossy, graphics, full page advertisements even online versions

Glossy, graphics, advertisements, many are large format or online

Newsprint or online

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, EBSCOhost Research Databases 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.

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Last modified: Sep 30, 2009, 08:50 EDT
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