Comparing scholarly journals, popular and trade magazines

U N I V E R S I T Y O F U T A H - J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY
Comparing scholarly journals, popular and trade magazines

Professors will look at your bibliography to see that you consulted appropriate and reputable sources. Many will expect you to use the scholarly journals in their field.

Some indexes allow you to limit your search to peer-reviewed / scholarly journals. This will do a rough sort, but periodicals may be hybrids; for example, Science is a major scholarly journal that also includes news items, opinion pieces, and ads for jobs and lab equipment. Judge each article's suitability for your purpose using the criteria below.

	Popular/General	Trade	Scholarly
Purpose / Content/ Examples	Inform and entertain general public. Contains news, feature stories, opinion pieces Example: Gourmet	Inform people within one industry. Contains news,opinion, and practical advice. Example: Restaurant Business	Disseminate new findings and theories Contain thorough descriptions of original work (experiment, fieldwork, survey, textual analysis). Example: Journal of the American Dietetic Association
Audience	Broad. Language accessible to all or to educated laymen.	One industry or profession. Language includes technical terms and jargon.	One academic field Language includes technical terms and assumes substantial knowledge of field.
Authors / Editors	Editors assign their own reporters or commission free-lancers to write specific articles. Reporter is often describing other peoples' experiences or opinions. Authors and editors are paid.	Editors generally assign, commission, or accept articles. Authors are reporters employed by magazine or practitioners in field.	Scholars write articles based on their own research. Scholars are usually PhDs-faculty, government scientists, museum curators, etc. Editors are fellow scholars who peer-review or referee to ensure research was done correctly and that result is new and significant. Authors' and editors' rewards are intangible -scientific progress, intellectual curiosity, prestige-not money.
Accountability	Controlled by journalistic ethics. May be fact-checkers employed by magazine.	Controlled by journalistic and professional ethics.	Controlled by peer-review process. Research process (experiment design and method, footnotes to published sources used) described thoroughly so other researchers can replicate process to make sure it was done logically.
Appearance	Eye-catching covers Usually heavily illustrated Generally include many ads for products which appeal to a fairly broad audience.	Covers often feature news item. Fairly heavily illustrated. Includes ads for products of interest only to people in that industry. Articles may include abstracts and short bibliographies.	Covers often plain, vary little issue to issue. Illustrations limited to those strictly necessary to elucidate article. Includes few ads. Articles almost always include abstract and footnotes / bibliography. Format of articles standard within a field: typically hypothesis, description of previous research, methodology, results, conclusions.
Publisher	Commercial	Commercial or industry association.	Scholarly society, university, or specialist commercial firm.
Access	Sold on newsstands or sent to homes of subscribers. Many reputable magazines are covered by general purpose indexes like Academic Search Premier.	Generally sent to office of subscribers. Indexed in scattered indexes. Fullest coverage in business indexes.	Generally sent to subscribing university libraries, labs or offices. Now often fully online. Most indexed only in index devoted to that field: e.g. PsychInfo. A few major titles in most fields are in Academic Search Premier.

DEFINITIONS:
Serial Something which keeps coming: newspaper, magazine, conference proceedings, etc.
Periodical Serial publication issued at a regular interval: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.
Magazine Often used to refer to a popular or general interest periodical.
Journal Often used to refer to scholarly periodical. Word itself in title is not necesssary or sufficient to define it as scholarly. Wall Street Journal and Ladies Home Journal aren't scholarly; Fragblast and Gut are.
Peer reviewed / Refereed Process of accepting papers in scholarly journals. An author submits her article to an editorial board. The board assigns it to several experts in her sub-discipline who review it more thoroughly to see that the research was done properly. The referees advise the author of changes which will improve the paper, and advise the editorial board whether the article is original and significant enough to warrant publication. The process is often anonymous to promote impartiality.

Bibliography for this webpage:

Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from Other Periodicals www.trinity.edu/departments/library/disting_journals.html (URL inOct. 2000)
Different Types of Periodicals: Journals, Magazines, Peer-reviewed, Primary, Secondary . . . www.lib.sfu.ca/kiosk/ngick/periodicaltypes.htm (URL in Oct. 2000)