Scholarly and Popular Articles: What's the Difference? Types of Scholarly Articles Finding Articles   Citing Assistance   Accessing Library Resources From Off Campus Library Homepage Scholarly and Popular Articles: What's the Difference? Scholarly publications publish journals. Popular press publications publish magazines. Journal articles and magazine articles are very different from each other. Some of the differences are apparant in the following areas: Audience: Who was the article written for? Author: What kind of job job does the author have? What are the author's credentials? Language: How does this article sound? What educationallevel is the article written for? Content: What is being written about? Does the author write with bias? References: Where does the author get his/her information? Is the information quoted easy to find on your own? Look at other factors like: publisher editorial process advertising content of publication overall look of the print version (if available) Read this to learn how to distinguish scholarly journals from other periodicals. If you really get stuck and can't figure out if a publication is scholarly or popular using the criteria listed above, you can use use one of the three techniques listed below: Look at the reference book like "Magazines for Libraries" located at the Reference Desk Look at the publisher's or journals web site in the "About Us" (or similar) section Ask a librarian at the Reference Desk (Warning! The reference librarians will employ one or both of the two techniques listed above if we are really stumped!) return to top Types of scholarly articles Empirical articles. Literature review articles. Two of the most popular types of scholarly articles used by psychologists. Here's a refresher of what you learned in class about the difference between empirical and literature review articles. Empirical and Literature Review Articles ~ by Jennifer Paliatka return to top Finding Articles PsycINFO The primary index (no full text) for psychological topics, produced by the American Psychological Association. To access this resource from off campus, go to Articles and Databases and select PsycINFO from the list. You may also want to look at Accessing Library Resources From Off Campus. Proquest Psychology Journals A source for full-text journal articles from nearly 300 psychology journals. Full page images include tables and graphs. To access this resource from off campus, go to Articles and Databases and select ProQuest Psychology Journals from the list. You may also want to look at Accessing Library Resources From Off Campus. PsycARTICLES Full text articles from APA journals dating back to 1996, covers hundreds of scientific, technical, and medical journals. To access this resource from off campus, go to Articles and Databases and select PsycARTICLES from the list. You may also want to look at Accessing Library Resources From Off Campus. ScienceDirect Provides indexing to its entire library. In addition, there is access to full-text articles in approximately 100 psychology journals from 1999 to the present. To access this resource from off campus, go to Articles and Databases and select PsycARTICLES from the list. You may also want to look at Accessing Library Resources From Off Campus. Free registration is required for accessing articles in full-text.   Use Illinet Online to determine if the library owns the journal in print or microfilm, and check Journals and Magazines Available Online for electronic access to journals. If the article you seek is unavailable from these sources, please request it through our online Interlibrary Loan article request form. return to top Citing and Research Assistance Citing Sources Using APA Style Elmhurst College Library APA Style Guides Duke University Library APA's Guide to Citing Electronic Sources A print version of the APA Publication Manual, Fifth Edition, is available at the Reference Desk, R808.06615 P976 2001.   return to top   This page was created 11/01/2004, by Jennifer Paliatka, Assistant Librarian, Elmhurst College.