| Features | Popular Magazines | Scholarly Journals |
|---|---|---|
| # of authors | Usually one | Sometimes one, but often multiple authors |
| Ads | Many ads for consumer products | Often no ads. Publishers charge high subscription fees |
| Article Structure | Like a story or essay | Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Bibliography. |
| Author credentials | Often not listed. | Usually list author's degrees and current employer |
| Who are the authors? | Journalists of staff writers | College professors or other professional researchers |
| Content | News, popular culture, politics, etc. | Original research on an empirical research, an experiment or an observation. |
| Illustrations | Lots of photography, drawings, color. | Charts, graphs, tables primarily. Some disciplines do use photographs to illustrate points (medicine, for example). |
| Length | One paragraph up to a few pages | Usually at least five pages, often more. Ten-twelve pages is about average. Some law journals publish very long articles (50-80 pages.) |
| Title | Written to entice reader, draw read in. | Long and descriptive--no mystery! |
| Vocabulary used | Easily read by general public. No specialized knowledge required | Written for experts. May be difficult to understand. Students often need to read articles multiple times and look up unfamiliar terms to understand the article. |
Note: Scholarly journals often publish shorter articles such as book reviews or editorials. Even if the journal itself is "peer reviewed" these types of articles are not considered 'peer reviewed.' Peer reviewed articles will be lengthy, have an abstract, a bibliography, etc.
When in doubt, please ask a librarian!
This interactive tutorial from the University of Arizona will help students practice the skill of differentiating between popular sources and scholarly journals.
This tutorial is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.