What is the difference between scholarly journals and popular magazines?

Articles in scholarly journals (also known as academic, peer-reviewed, or refereed journals) are different from articles in popular magazines for many reasons, including: the publication process, the authorship, the audience, and the purpose. Those factors affect other qualities and characteristics of the article or journal.

While popular magazine articles are sometimes acceptable sources for research assignments, many instructors expect students to use articles from scholarly journals. In general, you will likely need to access scholarly journals via a library journal subscription. Check out our How do I know if a source is peer-reviewed? FAQ or browse journals in our collection.

Publication process

This video, From Idea to Library provides a quick overview of the scholarly publication process which is quite different from the process of an article being published for a magazine. Part of the publication process for scholarly articles is the peer review process.

Authorship, audience, and purpose

For scholarly articles, the authors and the intended audience are scholars, academics, and other researchers.Their purpose is to report new findings from a research study, provide a framework or recommendations based on a study, or to share new theories, interpretations, or ideas that are founded in research. Since the audience is other researchers, they can use this information to inform their own thinking, researching, and writing.

The authors for popular magazines are typically journalists, professionals, or people who are otherwise active in their field. Their audience is typically the general public and as a result, their purpose and style can range widely. They might cover topics or findings discovered in scholarly research, but they have written it for a general audience, not other scholars in the field.

Here is a chart comparing articles from popular and scholarly sources.

Format, language, article characteristics, and availability

Due to the differences in audience and purpose, there are many qualities including the formatting, language, length, and other characteristics that distinguish scholarly from popular articles. The Anatomy of a Scholarly Article is an interactive guide highlighting the key parts of a scholarly article.

In addition, the availability of scholarly articles is quite different from popular magazines. That is primarily due to the audience again, as well as the cost. Scholarly journals are often very expensive because they're reporting research that was very expensive to conduct or produce. For that reason, scholarly journals and articles are typically made available through libraries or other large organizations that rely on having access to the research. There are some free and open access scholarly journals, but many require an expensive subscription.

Because the audience is much more broad and the information in popular articles or magazines is much more widely available, the cost of magazines is often much less expensive.