| Look at the... |
Popular Magazines and Newspapers |
Professional, Trade, and Industry or Special-Interest Periodicals |
Scholarly, Academic, Peer-Reviewed, or Refereed Journals |
Citation |
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| Frequency or publication | Issued frequently: weekly, biweekly, or monthly | Issued frequently: weekly, biweekly, or monthly | Issued less frequently: monthly, quarterly, or semiannually |
| Authors of articles | Often on author. Written by staff writers, freelance authors, or guest contributors. | Often one author. Written by staff writers, freelance authors, guest contributors, or professionals in the field. | Frequently multiple coauthors. Scholars and researchers in the field, discipline, or specialty. Authors with university affiliations or professional titles. |
| Article titles | Popular or catchy article titles. | Straightforward article titles, sometimes popular and catchy. | Titles related to the research question or results; often long, not catchy. |
Whole Periodical |
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| Audience | Educated but non-expert readers; uses simple language in order to meet minimum education levels. | Practitioners of a particular profession, members of a trade, or workers in an industry; language appropriate for an education readership; assumes a certain level of specialized knowledge. | Scholars and researchers in the field, discipline, or specialty; language contains terminology and jargon of the discipline; reader is assumed to have a scholarly background. |
| Purpose | Designed to entertain or persuade readers with a variety of general interest topics in broad subject fields; also geared to sell products and services through advertising. | Examines problems or concerns in a particular profession or industry; provides specialized information to a wide interested audience. | To inform, report, or make available original research or experimentation in a specific field or discipline to the rest of the scholarly world: where new knowledge is reported. |
| Paper, illustrations, layout | Eye-catching covers, glossy paper, photos, illustrations, cartoons, sidebars. | Eye-catching covers, glossy paper, photos, illustrations, cartoons, sidebars. | Plain covers, usually plain matte paper; mostly text inside, with tables, figures, charts, graphs; little to no color or illustrations. |
| Advertising | Many ads for general consumers products and services. | Many ads for products and services related to a particular profession, trade, or industry. | Few to no ads; if any, tend to be for other journals or specific services or specific services and products. |
Articles |
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| Abstracts | No abstract | No abstract | Articles usually have an abstract at the beginning that summarizes the findings of the article. If there is no abstract, the article may be a review, editorial, or letter to the editor. |
| References | Sources are not cited; no references or bibliography at the end of the article. | Sources are not cited; no references or bibliography at the end of the article. | Scholarly references in the form of bibliographies, reference lists, and footnotes appear in each article. |
Examples |
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| Glamour, People, Reader's Digest, Newsweek | Beverage World, Restaurant News, Advertising Age, Scientific American | Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, American Historical Review | |
Access |
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From the library homepage: OneSearch tab: Enter search, then limit by source type to Magazines and Newspapers Databases tab: View full database list, then change the database type to News and Newspapers |
From the library homepage: OneSearch tab: Enter search, then limit by source type to Trade Publications |
From the library homepage: OneSearch tab: Enter search, then limit by source type to Academic Journals or Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals Databases tab: View full database list, then change the database type to Academic/Scholarly |