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Popular
and Scholarly Sources
Many course assignments may ask you to use specific sources
like popular magazine articles, or scholarly/professional journal articles.
There are some basic ways you can identify these types of periodicals:
|
Type of Source |
Popular
Magazines |
Trade
Journals |
Scholarly
Journals |
| Examples |
Ladies
Home Journal, Psychology Today, Time, Ebony |
Advertising
Age, The CPA Journal, Billboard, American Libraries |
Journal
of the History of Ideas, College English, Antiquity, Science |
| Audience |
For
the general public; use 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 relating to the given industry or field, 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. |
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