Your instructor may require you to use scholarly sources for an assignment as they are considered more authoritative. For this reason it's important to recognize the differences between popular magazines and scholarly journals.
EXAMPLES OF POPULAR MAGAZINES:
- Visually appealing, heavily illustrated, lots of advertisements
- Often written by journalists for a general audience
- Language is easily understood by general readers
- Rarely provides full citations for sources
- Written for the general public
- Articles tend to be short
EXAMPLES OF SCHOLARLY JOURNALS:
- May contain charts, diagrams, yet often have a sober, serious look
- Are written by and for faculty, researchers or scholars
- Use scholarly or technical language
- Tend to be longer articles about research
- Include full citations for sources
- Are often refereed or peer reviewed, meaning articles are reviewed by a community of experts in a given field before being accepted for publication
