LibGuides: Information Literacy, Level Two: Scholarly vs. popular

Scholarly vs. Popular

For your research assignments, you may be required to use articles from scholarly journals. It is important to understand the differences between scholarly journals and popular magazines. The table below identifies the main characteristics of each type.

The peer review process

A researcher writes an article and before it can be published in a scholarly journal, it needs to be sent to the researcher's peers (meaning other researchers and experts in the field) to be looked over and critiqued. This peer review process makes sure that the article meets certain standards. Peer reviewed, or refereed, journals are scholarly journals that only publish articles that have gone through this review process.

Peer Review in Three Minutes from NC State University Libraries on Vimeo.

A note about journal titles

Remember that just because a journal has the word "journal" in the title, does not mean that it's a scholarly journal. On the other hand, many scholarly journal titles do not contain the word "journal". For example, the Wall Street Journal is a financial newspaper, not a scholarly journal, and American Literature is a peer reviewed scholarly journal.