Judging Sources: Is Your Journal Scholarly? 

To complete your research assignment your instructor has probably asked you to locate articles published in scholarly journals. The following checklist summarizes major differences between scholarly journals, popular magazines, and trade or professional periodicals. Skilled information foragers learn how to judge their sources critically. Which type of source have you encountered?

CHARACTERISTICS OF... IN TERMS OF THEIR...	SCHOLARLY JOURNALS	POPULAR MAGAZINES	TRADE / PROFESSIONAL PERIODICALS
GENERAL APPEARANCE	Plain, serious covers; charts & graphs or limited illustrations, often printed black and white; very little or no advertising	Usually an eye-catching, glossy cover; color photos; extensive advertising	A glossy cover displaying an industrial or professional work environment or product; often color ads and illustrations
AUDIENCE	Scholars, researchers, or professionals in a particular field of study or discipline	Nonprofessionals and the general public	Practitioners in a particular business, profession, or industry
AUTHOR	Always prominently identified; professional credentials given; contact information usually	Often not identified, or a staff journalist or reporter paid to write for the publication;	Usually but not always identified; often a professional or specialist
ARTICLE CONTENT	Original research on a narrowly focused topic; often preceded by an abstract (summary) of the article; terminology is specialized, assuming previous knowledge of the subject; sources always cited in a lengthy bibliography	Entertaining or informative material of interest to the general public; articles and paragraphs fairly short in length; common language is used, assuming little previous knowledge; no bibliography or cited references	Articles tend to present reports of technical developments or news in the field rather than original research; fairly short in length (1-5 pages); no abstracts; cite few sources; use language familiar to people in the industry or profession
PUBLICATION PROCESS	Articles submitted by authors are typically reviewed by their peers (other researchers or experts in the same specialty or discipline), and may be rejected or accepted, or sent back to the author for revision prior to publication	Articles are not peer reviewed	Articles are usually not peer reviewed
PURPOSE	To add to the body of knowledge in a discipline, through original research or systematic experimentation; usually sponsored by not-forprofit organizations; distributed through paid subscription to individuals or institutions (such as IPFW's Helmke Library!)	To inform or entertain the general public; produced for profit; sold at bookstores and newsstands	To communicate trends, developments, product information, concepts and applications useful to those working in a trade or profession
SOME EXAMPLES	American Anthropologist Journal of Consumer Affairs Journal of Music Theory Journal of Social Psychology Physics Review	Consumers Digest Natural Health Psychology Today Rolling Stone Science News	Advertising Age American Libraries Education Digest ENR: Engineering News-Record
TO DISCOVER ARTICLES	Use a specialized database that indexes the literature of a particular field, such as PsycINFO (for psychology), GeoRef (for geosciences), or Medline (for medicine); to discover databases in your field of study, use the library's Find Resources By... Subject	Use a database that indexes and abstracts a wide variety of general-interest magazines such as EBSCOhost's Academic Search Premier	Use a multidisciplinary database like Academic Search Premier, or one focused on a particular trade or profession, such as ABI/Inform (for business) or Compendex (for engineering)
TO DELIVER ARTICLES	Most of the scholarly or multidisciplinary databases licensed by IPFW Helmke Library have a linking tool installed called . If you follow this link, you will find all of your delivery options, including immediate access to articles in more than 40,000 electronic journals. Use E-Journal Finder to access this content by journal name.
TO LIMIT YOUR SEARCH	Databases that include a mix of scholarly, popular, and trade publications may have an option to limit search results to articles in "peer-reviewed," "refereed," "scholarly" or "academic" journals. Conversely, some databases also allow you to limit results to "magazines," "popular periodicals," or "newspapers."
TO LEARN MORE	Ask a Librarian to help you locate the best databases that are most likely to contain scholarly journals covering your topic. Ulrich's Web is an online directory of journals, magazines, and other serials that indicates whether or not a title is refereed (peer reviewed). A helpful feature in Ulrich's Web (under the Review tab) is Magazines for Libraries, which describes more than 7,000 major scholarly journals and popular magazines, and may be useful for determining whether a particular title is scholarly or not. In Academic Search Premier results, the Source link (the journal name) leads to detailed publication information.