|
Popular
and Scholarly Sources
Many of the assignments for your courses
may ask you to use specific sources or types of sources such as popular magazine articles or scholarly or
professional journal articles. There are some basic ways that you can identify these types of periodicals.
|
Type of Source |
Popular Magazines
|
Trade
Journals |
Scholarly Journals
|
|
Examples
|
The Economist, Psychology
Today, Time, National Geographic |
Advertising Age, The CPA Journal, Billboard, American Libraries |
Journal of the History of Ideas,
College English, Antiquity, Science |
|
Audience |
For the general public;
uses language understood by the average reader |
For
those in a particular trade or industry |
For students, scholars,
researchers; uses specialized vocabulary of the discipline |
|
Content |
May report research as news items, feature stories, editorials
and opinion pieces |
Reports
on problems or issues in a particular industry |
Reports original research,
theory; may include an abstract |
|
Appearance |
Highly
visual, a lot of advertising, color, photos, short articles
with no bibliographies or references |
Visual,
contains advertising,
color, photos, |
Little
or no advertising, has tables & charts, high concentration of print, lengthy
articles, bibliographies & references |
|
Authors |
Author may not be named,
frequently a staff writer, not a subject expert |
Staff
writers, freelance authors |
Authors are specialists,
articles are signed, & credentials such as degrees, university affiliation are often
given. |
|
