University Library > Guides > Scholarly Journals v. Popular Magazine Articles

Scholarly Journal v. Popular Magazine Articles

How to tell the difference between scholarly and popular periodical articles

Identifying scholarly articles involves analysis of the article's content. The chart below is meant to help you in this process; any one criteria by itself may not indicate that an article is scholarly. For example, a 30 page photo spread about stars at the Academy Awards may not be scholarly.

	Scholarly	Popular
Length	Longer articles, providing in-depth analysis of topics	Shorter articles, providing broader overviews of topics
Authorship	Author an expert or specialist in the field, name and credentials always provided	Author usually a staff writer or a journalist, name and credentials often not provided
Language/Audience	Written in the language of the field for scholarly readers (professors, researchers or students)	Written in non-technical language for anyone to understand
Format/Structure	Articles usually more structured, may include these sections: abstract, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion, bibliography	Articles do not necessarily follow a specific format or structure
Special Features	Illustrations that support the text, such as tables of statistics, graphs, maps, or photographs	Illustrations with glossy or color photographs, usually for advertising purposes
Editors	Articles usually reviewed and critically evaluated by a board of experts in the field (refereed or peer-reviewed)	Articles are not evaluated by experts in the field, but by editors on staff
Credits	A bibliography (works cited) and/or footnotes are always provided to document research thoroughly	A bibliography (works cited) is usually not provided, although names of reports or references may be mentioned in the text

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Still can't tell the difference? These resources can help:
Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory

Magazines for Libraries / Reference Collection Z6941 .K2

Still confused?
Ask a Reference Librarian for help (see below).

This web page was created by Celita DeArmond for the University of Texas at San Antonio, modified with permission for the use of the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.

For assistance, contact a reference librarian at (262) 472-1032, by email or chat or in person at the Library's Reference Desk.

Last Revised: MS - 10/19/2007