Scholarly Sources![]() |
Popular Sources![]() |
Author: Experts, researchers |
Author: Reporters, journalists, professionals, company employees, or anyone |
Written for: Other experts and researchers |
Written for: General public |
Publisher: University, academic press, sometimes government |
Publisher: Newspaper, magazine,non-academic publisher or website |
Vocabulary: Advanced, technical, scholarly |
Vocabulary: General language |
Purpose: To report research findings, build on the academic literature |
Purpose: To inform, entertain, convince, market, or sell |
Editing:
Reviewed by other experts (peer review) |
Editing: Basic editing |
References: Yes; look for footnotes or a list of sources at the end of the article. |
References: Not usually, though studies or other sources may be mentioned |
Once you have found your two articles (one that's more popular, one that's more scholarly), you will compare characteristics of those two articles:
CHARACTERISTICS (just pick 3 for this assignment) |
DESCRIPTION |
Author credentials |
What are the qualifications of the authors to write these articles? What are their educational credentials and affiliations? What experience do they have writing about this topic? |
Audience |
Who is the intended audience? Consider language/jargon, concepts. |
References |
Describe any references or works cited, including the amount of references, type of references, where in the article the references are provided. |
Publisher |
Identify the publisher and any relevant information about the publisher. |
Purpose |
Why was the article written? |
Editing |
Is it peer reviewed? Or basic editing? How do you know? |
To determine how scholarly a source is, look at these characteristics (to learn more about each, click on the square icons):
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How Scholarly?
Sources of information can range from being not scholarly, to very scholarly, to somewhere in the middle. Each source will go somewhere on this scale. Use the characteristics described above to determine where a source falls on the scale.
0 |---------------------------------------------------5--------------------------------------------------| 10 | ||
Least Scholarly e.g., entertainment, childrens' books |
Mid-Level Sources that are not as scholarly, but still credible, include popular periodicals such as magazines and newspapers. |
Most Scholarly Scholarly sources typically include academic journal articles. |