Skyline College Library

Popular Magazines vs. Scholarly Journals

	Popular Magazines	Scholarly Journals
Overall appearance	Glossy paper, advertisements, heavily illustrated, attractive in appearance	Serious, may contain graphs or charts; no glossy pages, photographs; few or no advertisements
Audience	General Public	Scholars, researchers and students
Authors	Journalists, professional writers; credentials rarely provided	Researchers, scholars, or experts in the field; the article includes their academic credentials
Documentation	Sources sometimes cited for news articles, but rarely	Cited sources in footnotes or bibliography
Purpose	Provide general information	Report on or review original research or experimentation in narrowly focused discipline or academic subject.
Article Acceptance Procedure	Articles written by hired reporters, edited by magazine editors	Often undergo a "peer-review" process -- reviewed by other scholars in the field before being published --sometimes these journals are called "peer-reviewed journals" or "refereed journals"
Examples	Time, Newsweek, Psychology Today, Ms., Nation, Popular Science, Life, Sports Illustrated, Commentary, Architectural Digest, The Futurist, Motor Trend, Natural History, Prevention, Sierra, Sunset, Wired	New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Adolescence, American Historical Review, Art History, Counseling Psychologist, Geological Society of America Bulletin, Harvard Law Review, Management Science, Urban Affairs Quarterly, Women's Studies.

How to identify scholarly books

To find out more about most publications, do a Wikipedia search for the title How to determine the political perspective of a magazine or journal To find research studies, look for articles in scholarly journals that include the following sections: Method(s): may include "Procedure", "Participants", "Measures" Results Discussion Data (usually included in statistical tables at the end of the article)

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last revised: 1-26-11 by Eric Brenner, Skyline College, San Bruno, CA These materials may be used for educational purposes. All commercial rights are reserved. Skyline College Library.