Scholarly, Popular and Trade Articles,
          What's the Difference?
 

At some point in your college career a professor will instruct you to locate articles in scholarly journals, or distinguish the difference between and popular article and a trade article.  The chart below will help you distinguish between Scholarly, Popular and Trade articles.  If your still uncertain consult a librarian or seek some of the resources listed on the other side of this guide.

 

SCHOLARLY

POPULAR

TRADE
Audience

Professors, researchers, students

 

General reading audience

Members of a specific association, business, organization or industry

Author

Professional or expert in field

Journalist, student, popular author, staff writers

Industry practitioners and professional writers

Magazine staff members, journalists, freelance writers

Bibliographies or References

Bibliography, works cited, footnotes

No bibliographies, mentions reports/specialists

May have short bibliographies

Articles have a few footnotes or may not have any footnotes

Language

Advanced reading level

Non-technical language

Geared to audience in industry

Length

Long articles (10 or more pages)

Short articles (1-4 pages)

Articles fairly short (1-5 pages) 

Content or

Purpose

Discusses a specific scholarly field

Current events, general interest, and personalities

Does not reflect original research

 

Review Policy/Editor

Reviewed by peers, experts/scholars in the field

Editor or editorial board reviews

Editor or editorial board reviews

Special Features

Tables, graphs, maps

Glossy paper, color images, advertisements

Glossy paper

Advertisements aimed at people in profession

Publishes job listings

Useful For

Reports on experiments and research studies

Lengthier book reviews, reviews of scholarly books

Shows what the general public is interested in, is being told about a topic

Give practical information, "how to do things"

 Address current concerns of an industry
Examples of Journals & Magazines

Foreign Affairs

Journal of American Folklore

Sex Roles

Shakespeare Quarterly

Ladies Home Journal

Newsweek

Sports Illustrated

Psychology Today

U.S. News & World Report

APA Monitor

Advertising Age

Chronicle for Higher Education

PC Week
Databases

ERIC

JSTOR

PsycInfo

Sociological Abstracts

Readers’ Guide

Lexis/Nexis

MasterFile Premier

 

Business Source

Lexis/Nexis

  Text Box: Definitions

 

Periodical = a generic term for publications containing separately written articles or other short works, and usually issued at regular intervals. Newspapers, newsletters, magazines, and journals are all periodicals. 

Peer reviewed, academic or referred journals = refers to the policy of having experts in the field examine a submitted article before accepting it for publication. The peer review (or referee) process insures that the research described in a journal’s article is sound and of high quality.

Bibliography – A list that contains the names and details of all the sources used in an essay, research paper, articles, etc. Other terms often used are works cited, references, and SOURCES

Text Box: Databases    

 

Some article databases allow limiting to peer-reviewed journals in a search, while others may use a mark or symbol to indicate if the journal is peer-reviewed.  Some examples of databases that do this: CINAHL (Nursing and Allied Health database); EBSCO databases like Academic Search Premier, Business Source. 

 Other databases like JSTOR or ProjectMuse contain only journal articles.

 Consult the front of the guide for other examples of databases.

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