If you are a student (especially in college) or once a student, researches and term papers have become a part of your school life. All reference materials like scholarly journals and magazine articles you’ve met and became acquainted with helped you in your own research-and-term-paper-making process. You got to scour different articles and resources from these magazines and journals. Somehow, they have their similarities with how the information you need is given. And in one way or another they have differences by the way they present the information, their length or style, and so on.
So, what are the differences between scholarly journals and popular magazine articles? How can you tell the difference between these two types of periodical articles? Students, read on.
When it comes to length, scholarly journals offer longer articles, providing in-depth analysis of topics, while popular magazines have shorter articles, providing broader overviews of topics. The authorship of the articles differ in terms of their expertise. Scholarly journal authors usually are experts or specialists in the field, their name and credentials always provided. Authors of popular magazine articles usually are staff writers or journalists, and their names and credentials are often not provided
With regard to the language and the audience, scholarly journals are written in the jargon of the field for scholarly readers, like professors, researchers or students, while popular magazine articles are written in non-technical language for anyone to understand. The format and structure of scholarly journal articles are usually more structured, may include sections such as abstract, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion and bibliography. While in popular magazines, articles do not necessarily follow a specific format or structure.
The special features include illustrations that support the text, such as tables of statistics, graphs, maps, or photographs in scholarly journal articles. In magazine articles, illustrations with glossy or color photographs, usually for advertising purposes are included.
Scholarly journal articles are usually reviewed and critically evaluated by a board of experts in the field (refereed) while magazine articles are not evaluated by experts in the field, but by editors on staff. The credits in scholarly journals include a bibliography (works cited) and footnotes provided always to document research thoroughly. A bibliography is usually not provided, although names of reports or references may be mentioned in popular magazine articles.
Saw the difference? Hope it helped you students in your research and study life!