LibGuides: ENGL 1320: Writing for Social Change: Finding Academic Sources

Popular vs. Scholarly Articles

There are three different types of articles that often appear in the databases: Scholarly, Popular, and Trade. How do you know which one you are looking at? Use the table to help you!

Popular	Trade	Scholarly/Peer-reviewed
General public/average reader	Practice-based advice for professionals working a specific field	Focused on researchers and professional
Shorter length	Short or medium length articles	Long, in-depth articles
Few or no citations	May contain some citations or further readings	Extensive bibliographies
Issued weekly or monthly	Issued weekly, monthly, or quarterly	Issued quarterly or monthly
Author may not be listed or is probably not an expert	Articles are written by practitioners working in the field; credentials may be listed	Articles written by specialists with credentials listed
Very visual (includes photos and advertisements)	Generally contain photos pertaining to the field or the article; may contain some advertisements	Text-dense, little color, charts/tables, no or few advertisements
Reviewed by the publisher or editor	Reviewed by the publisher or editor	Reviewed by independent editorial board

Academic Article Checklist

Need a quick way to determine if an article is peer-reviewed or not? Use this checklist:

✔	Question
	Is the source written by a researcher or academic?
	Is the source published in a scholarly publication (journal or book)?
	Does the source have an extensive bibliography?
	Is the source approximately 6 pages or more?