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 Popular articles are not peer-reviewed.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 |
American Journal of Sociology |
Time |
SocINDEX(tm) with Full Text is the world's most comprehensive and highest quality sociology research database. Its extensive scope and content provide users with a wealth of extremely useful information encompassing the broad spectrum of sociological study.
Comprehensive database on all areas of sociology, including social behavior, human tendencies, interaction, relationships, community development, culture and social structure.
Analyze and organize a variety of data for conducting research, completing writing assignments, preparing for debates, creating presentations and more. Includes multiple formats, including statistics, opinion, news, and peer-reviewed articles.
Bibliographic records and full text covering essential areas of criminal justice and criminology. Coverage from 1910-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.
Includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to race relations, including ethnic studies, discrimination, immigration studies, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline.
Bibliographic records covering urban studies, including urban affairs, community development, urban history, and other areas of key relevance. Full archive with coverage back to 1973.
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.
