Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Scholarly vs Popular Sources
In some cases, your professors will require you to use a scholarly source for your research.
Scholarly sources, which are also referred to as peer-reviewed or refereed sources, provide
a very solid basis for your own research.
The term scholarly originates from the idea that these articles are written by scholars
in a field, for scholars in a field.
Sometimes scholarly articles are called peer-reviewed because they are also reviewed by other scholars
in the field, who are deeply familiar with the topics being researched.
This is different from much of the information we encounter, which is generally “popular”
- meant for the general public.
Some examples of popular sources you have probably seen are weekly news magazines, such
as Time and Newsweek.
Articles from popular sources are generally written by reporters, and the articles tend
to be short - less than 3 pages. There may be interesting photographs or illustrations
in the text, but they may not be a critically important part of the article.
When you get to the end of the article...
there is no bibliography to show that the author did research to write the article.
Here’s an example of a scholarly article.
Scholarly articles are much longer - usually at least 3 pages - and they can even be as
long as 20, 50, or more pages. If there are any images or illustrations, they support
the content of the article. You might find a variety of charts and graphs.
Scholarly journal titles are more descriptive than popular titles - they generally incorporate
the name of the discipline in the title. For example, Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, or Shakespeare Quarterly. (Watch out for things that have the word “journal”
in the title that aren’t technically journals. Examples of those impostors are the Providence
Journal and the Wall Street Journal.)
The authors of scholarly articles, as mentioned before, are scholars, and their research affiliations
are usually listed clearly on the first page of the article. Sometimes, though, they are
listed at the end. These authors are researchers at a university.
Most of the time, scholarly article titles are long and descriptive. While some might
have a “catchy” or informal portion, the titles do include specifics about the article.
Scholarly articles tend to have abstracts at the beginning as well. Researchers are
busy people, and the abstract or summary at the beginning helps them determine whether
the article is relevant to their research - or not.
Science and social science research articles generally contain detailed information about
the research done, including the methods used, the results, and a discussion.
Humanities research articles have a more narrative style, and are not likely to have charts and
graphs.
Here we see the start of the Methodology section of an article, and a chart.
Scholarly articles have extensive footnotes or bibliographies that describe exactly where
the researchers found the information that they based their research on. You can use
these to find more information on the topic, if you need it.
These are some clues to help you determine whether something is scholarly. If you need
assistance or more tips, please feel free to ask a librarian.