Evaluating Journal Articles

Newspapers, popular magazines, scholarly journals, and trade publications are all significant sources of current information, but they vary tremendously in their level of scholarship and thus in their importance to your research.

Collectively, all these types of publications are known as periodicals. In this guide we will look at two types of periodicals - Journals and Magazines.

Journals are often referred to as Scholarly, Academic, Refereed, or Peer Reviewed. In essence these publications communicate the results of scholarship and provide authoritative and reliable information. They report on current research and are used by scholars both to keep up-to-date on what other researchers are doing, and also to communicate the results of their own scholarship.

High standards are maintained within these journals through a process known as peer review. In this system, journal article are reviewed by several other researchers in the field and must pass certain criteria before being accepted for publication. Journals which employ the peer review system are called Refereed Journals.

Magazines are written for the general public and are designed to entertain or provide general information to a wide audience.

There are no clear cut lines between journals and magazines since they often carry articles on similar topics, but the ways in which they report their information, make journals far more important for your academic research.

Who says you can't judge a periodical by its cover?

Click here to see what a cover can tell you about the periodical itself.

And what about the articles themselves?

Click here to examine two articles.

Additional Information:

Periodical Articles: From Sensational to Scholarly
Prepared by Library of Cornell University.

General Criteria for Distinguishing Journals from Magazines
Nealley Library Santa Ana College, California

How to Evaluate Journal Articles
Prepared by The Colorado State University Libraries.

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 Content Revised: July 17, 2008
 Content Created: August 12, 2002