Scholarly journals have collections of articles written by experts in academic or professional fields to keep others interested in that field, up-to-date on the most recent research, findings, and news. These articles are reviewed by a journal editorial board or experts in the specific discipline (peer-reviewed).
Popular Sources are articles, blog posts, and news feeds that are written primarily by journalists to inform the general public about interesting and newsworthy events. These articles may or may not be subject to a review process and should be heavily evaluated before use. Popular articles are not peer-reviewed.
|
|
Scholarly |
Popular |
|
Who is the Author? |
Researchers, Scholars and Professors |
Primarily journalists |
|
Who is the targeted audience? |
Students, scholars, and researchers |
The general public |
|
What is the purpose of the article? |
To advance understanding in a field of study |
To inform the public and sell newspapers/magazines |
|
Are there citations? |
Always |
Not often |
|
Are there ads? |
Rarely |
Most of the time |
|
Are current events covered? |
No - the peer review process takes time |
Yes |
|
Examples |
Journal of Applied Psychology |
Psychology Today |
Indexing and abstracts for over one million articles in 1,700 journals from over 50 countries. Includes abstracts for dissertations, books and chapters ranging from 1887 to the present.
Provides 500 full-text titles which include topics in emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods.
Web-based portal with access to journals, textbooks, practice guidelines, and assessment tools. Includes access to the DSM-V-TR.
One of the largest Internet sites devoted to psychological research and teaching. More than 15,000 links related to psychology.
Covers many aspects of sport, including physical fitness, exercise, sports medicine, sports science, physical education, kinesiology, coaching, training, sport administration, facility design & management, physical therapy, nutrition, exercise physiology, sport & exercise psychology, recreation, leisure studies, tourism, occupational health & therapy, and more. Coverage from 1500-present.
Includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to violence and abuse, including family violence, sexual assault, emotional abuse, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline. Coverage from 1995-present.
The world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary database. Indexes newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals in all disciplines. Contains a significant amount of full-text. Content available from 1915-present.
This is a full-text archive of key academic journals in many disciplines, mostly in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Being an archive, it does NOT USUALLY have the current issues of these journals. Most journals have a “lag time” of 2-5 years.
PsychINFO- Type "appended" in one of the search boxes and select Tests & Measures from the drop-down menu to the right of the search box. This will narrow your search to articles with tests appended. Use additional search boxes to add keywords.
ERIC: Type "tests/questionnaires" in one of the search boxes. and select Publication Type from the drop-down menu to the right of the search box to search for tests. Add keywords via additional search boxes.
In social and behavioral sciences databases you will find different kinds of research articles.
Original research studies report findings interesting to a particular research area or field. Researchers will report the methods and theories the researcher used to arrive at those findings, including limitations the researcher experiences.
Review articles selectively review important studies, methods, and theories, relevant to a particular research area or discipline. A meta-analysis review article analyzes the effectiveness of statistical measures in a particular research area or sub-discipline. Systematic reviews are very popular in the health and medical sciences. These kinds of review articles tell you exactly what kinds of literature and databases were searched in great detail (including defining the search parameters and the types of keywords used).
Book reviews are also popular in research journals. And you can find experts reviewing monographs, chapter by chapter, with great attention to how the book connects to the current literature in particular research area.
Editorials are also included in research journals. These are opinions of prominent researchers, in a particular subfield. They usually comment on the theme of particular journal issue, or call attention to a topic that the author of the editorial has strong opinion about (future direction of a field of inquiry, appropriate research methodology, etc.).
