Popular (Magazines)

• Audience: usually written by journalists or professional writers for a general audience
• Length: usually shorter than scholarly journal articles
• Author: journalist or professional writer; articles are not always signed
• Style: easy to comprehend by the general reader

Here are some examples of popular magazines in our library collection:

• Audience: written for professionals, researchers, or scholars
• Length: tend to be long articles supported by research and extensive bibliographies
• Author: written by professionals, researchers, or scholars; are often refereed or peer reviewed (i.e. articles are reviewed by subject specialists before they are considered for publication)
• Style: uses scholarly or technical language, not easily understood by the general reader

  Note: Book reviews and editorials published in scholarly journals are not considered scholarly articles

Here are some examples of scholarly journals in our library collection:

What if you are not sure if a journal is popular or scholarly? Where can you go for help?

• Go to the Reference Desk and ask to see a reference book called Magazines for Libraries.

  Magazines for Libraries is an annotated listing of over 6,000 periodicals. Each entry gives name of periodical, beginning publication date, publisher, editor, address, price and such information as indexing, size, and level of audience. Short abstracts describe the scope, political slant, and other aspects of the publication.
  

• Consult Ulrich's Periodicals Directory

  Ulrich's is comprehensive online directory that provides basic bibliographic and access information for almost all of the journals, magazines, and newspapers published worldwide. Ulrich's provides basic qualitative information about many of the periodicals, including audience and whether the publication is peer reviewed or not.