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Scholarly versus Popular Journals

Characteristics
Scholarly Journals
Popular Magazines
Content
In-depth, long detailed, statistical
Shorter, general information, current events, interviews, editorials
Author
Specialist with subject expertise; credentials included
Staff writer or journalist; credentials not provided
Audience
Scholars, researchers, students
General public
Language
Academic writing and vocabulary; specialized terminology
General, simple language; non-technical terminology
Graphics
Charts, graphs and tables; mostly black and white; few to no advertisements
Photographs, advertisements, charts, graphs; and tables; often uses color
Layout
Structured: abstract, objective, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion
Informal; no standard structure
Accountability
May be evaluated by peer reviewers; edited by experts in the field
Reviewed by editorial staff and/or fact-checked
Publisher
Professional organizations, universities, research institutes, scholarly presses
Commercial publishers, corporate ownership
Credits
Bibliography and/or footnotes
References may be mentioned in the text; no bibliography
Examples
Journal of Accounting, JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association
Time, Wall Street Journal, The Economist

Is my journal peer-reviewed?

If you are using a resource that does not allow you to search for only peer-reviewed articles, or if you are unable to determine whether an article is from a peer-reviewed journal, you can check whether or not a publication is peer-reviewed by checking Ulrichsweb.

Search for the journal by keyword, title, or ISSN. You can limit your results to only journals that are peer-reviewed using the Narrow Results menu to the left of the search results.

A referee's shirt located to the left of the journal title in the results list indicates that a journal is peer-reviewed. The peer-review limiter is located in the Narrow Results menu on the left side of the search results page. A referee's shirt left of a journal title in the search results indicates that a journal is peer-reviewed.

To learn more about peer-review and scholarly publications, visit Locating Peer-Reviewed / Scholarly Materials.