LS 102 Course Materials: Popular, Scholarly, Trade

You may have assignments that require using articles from “scholarly, peer-reviewed journals.” What does that mean? To figure it out, we need to look at the characteristics of different periodicals—publications released at regular intervals.

There are many types of periodicals: newspapers, magazines, trade publications, scholarly journals. Each type of periodical serves different purposes and audiences. That affects all characteristics of the periodical, such as who writes in them and what kind of language they use.

You can see the different characteristics of each type of periodical in the chart below. When evaluating, you will want to use more than one characteristic to determine what kind of periodical you have.

For example, if your article has an expert author, it could be from either a scholarly journal or a trade publication. You’d then need to look at other characteristics to determine whether it is scholarly.

When your professors ask you to use scholarly journals, they are thinking of these characteristics. Expert authors, in-depth information, and formal citation are all markers of high-quality information. Journals that are peer-reviewed, the process through which multiple experts examine the work, have an additional layer of documentation and credibility. In other words, your professors want you to use these sources because they have the best information for supporting research.

Does this mean other types of periodicals are useless? No – just that they are useful for different purposes. Popular articles from newspapers or magazines can help you understand a new topic and be easier to read. They are also more likely to cover current events. Trade publications can highlight important, practical questions facing a given profession. It all depends on the scope of your information need.

While you normally see “scholarly” as a designation for periodical articles, any source type can be popular or scholarly. For example, a book from a scholarly press with in-depth coverage of someone’s research would be considered scholarly. However, a book collecting funny cat pictures from the Internet would be popular.

Being scholarly also does not automatically mean there has been peer review.  For example, a government report on a research project is scholarly but usually not peer-reviewed. You will need to look into the publication’s information to see if it is peer-reviewed.