SCHOLARLY RESEARCH ARTICLES

In many college classes, you will be asked to find information from scholarly journals. This means you need to find research articles in peer-reviewed publications. The terms "scholarly" and "peer-reviewed" mean the same thing when applied to periodicals.

Both popular magazines and scholarly journals are called periodicals, because they are published at regularly scheduled times throughout the year. Differences between the two types are outlined below.

Magazines

articles written by staff writers, journalists or scholars
intended to provide information or entertainment for the average person
articles are usually fairly brief (10 pages or fewer)
have lots of advertising and color pictures
colorful, eye-catching covers
relatively inexpensive to subscribe

Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Glamour, and TV Guide are examples of magazines.

Journals

articles written by scholars and researchers in an academic or professional field of study
intended to communicate the results of research studies and other information in the field
editorial boards consisting of other scholars in the field determine whether an article can be published (this is the "peer-review" process)
articles often cover a very narrow or specific aspect of the field
usually an abstract, or summary, at the beginning of each article describes the research
articles are often lengthy (20+ pages)
specialized vocabulary not familiar to the average person
often include sophisticated statistical information
little or no advertising
often very expensive to subscribe

Child Development, Journal of Applied Psychology, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Comparative Education Review are examples of journals.

When you examine a print copy of a periodical, you can usually determine fairly quickly whether it is a magazine or a journal by looking for the visual clues described above.

When you are searching one of our online databases, however, you can't tell what the publication looks like. The title of the periodical and/or the length of the article can be an indication of the type of publication, but these are not guarantees. To help you, most our article databases include a checkbox to limit your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed journals only. When you need these kinds of articles, be sure to select this limiter when it is available.

Here is an example of a search screen in an EBSCOhost database, asking for articles that mention embryonic stem cells, with the Full Text and Scholarly Journals limiters checked: