More about Scholarly Journals

Magazines and journals are important sources for information in all academic disciplines. With so many periodical articles available to you through the VC/UHV Library's collection of electronic databases, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish articles that are "scholarly" from those that are not. The chart below can help you make up your mind.

	Popular Magazines	Scholarly Journals
Overall Appearance	Glossy Paper, advertisements, lots of illustrations and photographs, attractive in appearance	Sober and serious, may contain graphs or charts, but rarely glossy papers or photographs
Audience	General Public	Scholars and Students
Authors	Reporters	Scholars in the Field
Documentation	Sources sometimes cited for news articles, but rarely contain a bibliography or list of references	Sources cited in footnotes or bibliography
Purpose	To provide general information to the general public	To report on original research or experimentation
Article Acceptance Procedure	Articles written by hired reporters, edited by magazine editors, and published	Often undergo a process of peer-review (reviewed by other scholars in the field before being published.) Sometimes these journals are called "refereed journals" ***

*** Many of our electronic databases allow you to limit your search by "peer-reviewed", or "refereed" or "scholarly". Although the terminology is different, the meaning and end result will be the same - your search will be restricted to scholarly articles. For information how each database handles this search limit, see the online help in each database or contact Ask-a-Librarian.

Table used with permission from Duke University Library
(http:.//www.lib.duke.edu/libguide/popvs.schol.htm)
Page by Karen Locher
Last updated: 21-Aug-2002

More About Scholarly Journals