PSYC 2301 | Article Critique Assignment

♦ Abstract ♦ Introduction ♦ Methods ♦ Results ♦ Discussion ♦ Conclusion ♦ References ♦

Scholarly journals differ from popular magazines in a number of important ways. Popular magazines are produced for a wide audience and provide basic information and/or entertainment. Scholarly journals are written for scholars, students, and researchers and exist to advance the cause of research in a given field.

Here are some clues that will help you identify scholarly journals. Scholarly journals:

• Usually contain an abstract, or summary, before the main text of the article.
• Contain reports of research results.
• Always cite their sources with footnotes and/or bibliographies.
• Have serious formats rather than the glossy, slick formats found in popular magazines.
• Contain graphs or charts detailing the research described by the article.
• Are written by scholars or researchers. The authors’ affiliations will be listed on the first page or at the end of the article.
• Are usually published by a professional organization.
• Assume some technical background on the part of the reader—the language used is discipline-specific.

This video from the Peabody Library at Vanderbilt University explains the difference between scholarly and popular periodicals.