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Tutorial:
Scholarly vs. Popular

Introduction

Welcome to the Penn Valley Library's web tutorial on distinguishing scholarly journals from popular magazines. Instructors often require their students to use scholarly journals for research purposes. If students don't know what scholarly journals are, this can sometimes prove to be a difficult feat. This tutorial is designed to teach you the difference between these two types of periodicals and also to enhance your understanding of the terms "scholarly" and "popular."

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this tutorial you will:

• Be able to identify scholarly journals and popular magazines by their characteristics.
• Learn to examine and evaluate the content of these periodicals.

What is a Scholarly Journal?

A scholarly journal is defined as a journal that has been published or sponsored by a professional society or association. An example of a scholarly journal and association would be: The American Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. These characteristics of scholarly journals are what make them easily identifiable from popular magazines.

They are:

• Contains little or no advertisements and having articles 5 pages or more in length.
• Scholarly journals are also referred to as "peer reviewed" or "refereed" journals.
• Scholarly journal titles may include the word journal, review or annals.
• Introduction or Literature Review section - abstract or summary telling the reader what the article is about in a paragraph or so.
• Background or Theory Review section - same as introduction/literature review.
• Methods or Methodology section - number or percentage of participants in an article study.
• Results - findings of the study.
• Discussion
• Bibliography or Reference section - list of articles and books used to support the author's research.

Examples of Scholarly journals are:

• Annals of Physics
• Journal of Marriage and Family
• Developmental Psychology
• Review of General Psychology

On The Other Hand . . .

A popular magazine is defined as a magazine that is published for a general audience. The general audience consists of readers of news, sports, fashion and entertainment magazines.

Some of its characteristics are:

• printed on glossy or shiny paper.
• contains lots of advertisements.
• articles are usually 1 to 5 pages in length.

Examples of Popular magazines are:

• People
• Sports Illustrated
• Time

Below is a comparison chart used to distinguished the difference between scholarly journals and popular magazines. These journals and magazines have a set criteria that is used to evaluate them. This guide is one that you can print out and take with you for future reference.

CRITERIA	SCHOLARLY	POPULAR
Intended Audience	Scholars, researchers, and students	General public
Content	Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Bibliography/References, Graphs and Diagrams	Opinions, quick facts, entertaining articles
Length	5 pages or more	1 to 5 pages
Appearance	Professional looking	Glossy, lots of advertisements, enticing to the reader's eye
Authors	Scholars in a particular field of study	Reporters
Examples	Journal of Family and Marriage, Developmental Psychology, Annals of Internal Medicine, Review of General Psychology	Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Business Week

Tutorial Created by: Jackie Roberts
Updated: February 12, 2003
Questions? Email me: Jackie.Roberts@mcckc.edu

 

Information Literacy Assessment

This quiz is used to study the effectiveness of library instruction. Your participation is appreciated.

• Library Literacy Quiz