Q. What is the difference between scholarly and popular periodicals?

For college level research, it is important to know the difference between scholarly journals and popular magazines.

Here are some differences:

• Scholarly journal articles are written by experts in the field they are writing about.  Magazine articles are written by journalists.
• Scholarly articles may be peer-reviewed, a process of expert evaluation.  Magazines are only edited for clarity and to remove grammar and spelling mistakes.
• The audience for scholarly articles is other experts and scholars.  The audience for magazines is the general public.

For more information on Scholarly vs. Popular Periodicals, you can also watch the video below or work through a tutorial that describes 5 categories of source types.