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EN 124: College Research

Types of Sources

Popular vs. Scholarly Sources

Scholarly: used in research, often containing specialized vocabulary and extensive sources. The content has been reviewed by academic peers (peer-review) to ensure reliability and validity.

Popular: written typically to entertain, inform, or persuade for a general audience. Popular sources help you find information about current events or issues.

Trade publications: shares general news, trends, and opinions among practitioners in a certain industry or profession. Although generally written by experts, they are not considered scholarly because they do not focus on advancing new knowledge discovery or reporting research results and are not peer-reviewed.

Finding Scholarly Journal Articles

Finding Scholarly Journal Articles

In the database you're using:

Go to LIMITERS on the left side of your search results.
Select Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals under LIMIT TO.

Let's Compare!

Let's Compare!

Consider...	Popular: **Time or Newsweek**	Scholarly: Journal of American College Health
Advertising	Visible, eyecatching, variety of subjects.	Possibly none at all. If any, are related to field.
Audience	General public.	Targeted to scholars and professionals.
Authors	Staff writers and freelance writers.	Experts in their field (researchers, specialists, professors)
Citations	No citations, no sources, no footnotes.	Always cited, always provides sources.
Format	Informal and conversational style.	Standard format dictated by the field (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.)
Publisher	Commercial.	University or professional association.
Purpose	Inform and entertain.	Keep scholars and professionals current in research findings.
Review Policy	Articles are selected by a managing editor.	Peer-review process (panel of experts in a field decide on validity).