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Determine a Scholarly or Popular Source

The key difference between scholarly and popular magazine articles is the required peer review process for scholarly journal articles.

Peer review is a publishing process in academic fields. Before editors decide whether to accept an article for publication in a scholarly journal, they need to send this article to other researchers in this article's subject area to do a review. This process is called "peer review" because the author's peers (i.e. other scholars) decide if the article should be published.

Below are some of the characteristics of scholarly journals and popular magazines and newspapers.

Type of Periodical	Scholarly Journal	Popular Magazine or Newspaper
Contents	Original Research In-Depth Analysis	Current Events / Popular topics / Interviews Not original research by the author
Writing Level	Technical language Assumes college education	Simple, elementary language Assumes only 8th grade education!
Authors	Researchers, Academics Experts in the subject they are writing about	Reporters Not subject experts
Sources	Almost always has a list of Works Cited Extensive documentation	Rarely documents sources Documentation vague (e.g. "A study was done...")
Published By	Scholarly societies, University Presses	Commercial publishers
Pictures and Paper	Few or no photographs Includes charts or tables Regular white paper	Many photographs and pictures Glossy paper
Examples	Sociological Review Journal of Asian Studies Journal of Philosophy	People Weekly Sports Illustrated New York Times Denver Post
Length	Tends to be longer	Tends to be shorter



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