Canisius University | myCanisius | Desire2Learn
The following tutorials will help students to understand the value of the information they are finding.
Click Here for the ProQuest Research Companion tutorials.
How can I tell a scholarly article from a popular journal?
| Popular | Scholary | |
| Title | Short, "catchy" | Longer, more descriptive |
| Frequency of Publication |
Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly | Monthly, quarterly, semi-annually |
| Author | No job title OR job title such as staff writer or freelance writer | Accomanied by professional title affiliated with university and author's research field |
| Article Length |
Short, usually one page | Much longer, usually longer than three pages |
| Paper, Illustrations, Layout |
Glossy paper; photos, illustrations, cartoons | Plain white, matte paper; no illustrations or color; mostly text except for graphs and charts |
| Advertising | Many ads for consumer products | Very few ads for other journals and academic job openings |
| Audience | Written for general public | Written for scholars in the field, researchers |
| Writing style |
Simple language and sentence structure | Jargon, complex sentence structure that conveys ideas and assumes some knowledge of the field |
| References | No references listed | Long list of references at end of article and many in-text citations and footnotes |
Does your assignment require you to find scholarly, peer-reviewed or refereed articles? If you are not sure what these are you may want to check out some of these sites: