What is a Peer Reviewed Journal?
Do you know what it means when a professor's assignment requires that you use a scholarly or professional journal for your information sources? In short, a scholarly journal provides articles of primary research in a specific field or discipline. This guide lists some comparative criteria that will help you determine if the journal you are using meets your assignment's requirements. This comparison isn't about the accuracy of the popular magazines' information; it has to do with the level of scholarly information that is made available.
Most, if not all, of these criteria can be determined by looking at the journal's "Instructions to Authors" pages, the publication information, and the articles themselves (especially useful if the journal itself isn't available).
Scholarly vs. Popular Journals
| Element |
Scholarly journal/periodical article | Popular magazine article |
| Purpose | To share with other scholars the results of primary research & experiments. | To entertain or inform in a broad, general sense. |
| Author | A respected scholar or researcher in the field; an expert in the topic; names are always noted. | A journalist or feature writer; names not always noted. |
| Publisher | A professional association; a university or known scholarly publisher. | A commercial publisher. |
| Publication Acceptance | Experts (peers) in the field (or an outside editorial board) review each article submission before publication acceptance; author names are hidden from the reviewer in "blind reviews." | Writers are often employed by the magazine or publisher; acceptance is based largely on the topic's consumer appeal. |
| Intended Audience | Other scholars or researchers in the field, or those interested in the topic at a research level. | General public. |
| Content | Formal presentation of scholarly work in a standard style; often an abstract at the beginning of the article. Articles also have specific section headings, such as literature review, methodology, results, conclusion, and discussion/further study. | Often presented in story format, with anecdotes from other people. |
| Style | Language is very formal and technical; usually contains discipline-specific jargon. | Language is casual (high school reading level or lower). Few, if any, technical terms are used (and if they are, they are usually defined). |
| Appearance | Very basic layout, usually simple black text on white paper; tables or charts to illustrate research components; few, if any, pictures; any advertising is minimal and subject-related, aimed at the academic or research community. | Often printed on glossy paper with colored text or headlines; usually accompanying photographs and graphics; many advertisements for a wide variety of general consumer products. |
| References | Standard elements; references are always cited and expected; can be called "works cited" or "bibliographies;" text often contains footnotes. | Very uncommon; text may contain vague referrals to "a study published at..." or "researchers have found that..." with no other details about that information. |
| Examples | JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association; Journal of Educational Psychology; Harvard Theological Review | Newsweek; Rolling Stone; Field & Stream |
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