Literature & Authors

What is the difference between a popular source such as a magazine and a peer reviewed source / journal?

Magazines are written for the general public.  They often have a lot of advertisements in them.

Journals, on the other hand, are targeted to students or professionals working in a particular field.  The usually have very few ads in them.  The articles usually include bibliographies at at the end and the author's or authors' credentials (where they went to college and where they work) are given.

Sometimes a publication is peer-reviewed which means that all of the articles have been read and approved for publication by experts in the field.

Peer reviewed materials are excellent sources of information for scholarly papers!

Peer reviewed = Articles read & approved for publication by experts in the field

Experts = People with advanced degrees in the subject or who have worked in the field for many years

Popular sources such as magazines & newspapers

• Many advertisements
• Glossy pictures / photographs
• No bibliographies or list of sources
• Sometimes no author is listed
• Examples of magazines: 
  • U.S. News & World Report  
  • Psychology Today (sounds authoritative but is not) 
  • Time Magazine 
  • Sports Illustrated  

Peer reviewed materials

• Often include graphs and charts 
• Few advertisements 
• Bibliographies included
• Authors' credentials or backgrounds are given 
• Examples of peer reviewed journals: 
  • American Quarterly
  • Nursing Standard
  • Biology of Sport
  • American Journal of Criminal Justice
  • Journal of Modern Literature

A peer reviewed source does not have to be a journal. Recently, the University of Michigan Press published A. D. Carson’s new i used to love to dream, a peer-reviewed hip-hop album. 

Magazine or scholarly peer-reviewed journal?

EBSCO Publishing Company has an informative PDF charting the differences between general magazines, trade publications, and peer-reviewed journals. A link to the document is below. 

The Peer Review Process Flowchart

The flowchart below is from an article cited under the chart. (Reading the article or memorizing the chart is not required!) 

Memorizing the flowchart is not necessary. It is posted here to show the long, scholarly process required to obtain peer reviewed status. Summaries of the submitted article may appear in general or trade magazines before achieving peer reviewed designation The article or item may also be published online with the label "submitted for peer review" beforehand. 

Voight, Michael L., and Margaret J. Hoogenboom. "Publishing Your work in a Journal: Understanding the Peer Review Process." Journal of Sports Physical Therapy, vol. 7, no. 5, Oct. 2012, pp. 452-60, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3474310/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

Library Databases

Finding articles from peer reviewed journals and other sources is most efficiently accomplished by using the library databases. 

The library databases: 

• Tell you where the information came from: a book, magazine, journal, newspaper, or video, for example.  
• Tell you the original date of publication/production. This information is called the citation.  Be sure to write down or copy and paste all of the information listed below whenever you read, save, or print an article so that you will have it available for your Works Cited page.

More information about the MLA citation elements can be found on the MLA Citation Style library research guide. 

Why use the library databases instead of Google to find research materials for your papers or projects?

To save time finding full text scholarly sources of information!

The SC4 library subscribes to over 200 databases. The full list is available. You can search the databases individually or search them all at once by using the OneSearch box found on the library homepage. We will discuss using the OneSearch box later in this program.