Sheridan College Libraries

1. Also called:
   1. Academic Journals
   2. Referred Journals
   3. Juried Journals
   4. Peer-Reviewed Journals
   5. Research Journals
   
   
2. Articles in scholarly journals always list their information sources in either footnotes or bibliographies.
   
   
3. Articles are based on quantitative research or those that provide comparative or time-line data will frequently include diagrams, graphs, and/or charts.
   
   
4. Authors of scholarly articles are usually subject experts, researchers or scholars in their fields. Scholarly journals often list the author's credentials near the beginning of each article. If no specific credentials are present, such as degrees or other publications, the author of a scholarly article will likely associate with an institution of higher education.
   
   
5. Scholarly articles are usually organized into the following sections:
   1. Abstract
   2. Introduction or literature review
   3. Theory or background
   4. Methodology
   5. Results
   6. Discussion
   7. Bibliography
   
   
   
6. Scholarly articles are generally longer than articles in a popular magazine. The range of page numbers in the article citation will give you this information.
   
   
7. The language used in scholarly articles draws heavily upon terminology, jargon and definitions of the subject discipline. It assumes some degree of subject knowledge on the part of the reader. Therefore, the reading of scholarly articles may be difficult for newcomers to the discipline.
   
   
8. Many scholarly journals (but not all) are published by a professional organization, such as the American Medical Association (Journal of the American Medical Association) or the National Council on Family Relations (Journal of Marriage and the Family). As you can see from these examples, the name of the professional organization may or may not appear as part of the title. You may have to check inside the journal itself to determine what organization publishes your journal.
   
   
9. The main purpose of a scholarly journal is to report original research or experimentation results in order to make that information available to the rest of the scholarly or research world. You need to consult a copy of the journal. Look for the "Mission Statement" or "Editorial Policy" of the editorial board.
   
   
10. Research articles written for a scholarly journal are reviewed (refereed) by an editorial board and revised before being accepted for publication. You can find this type of information inside the front or back cover of an issue of a scholarly journal, in a section entitled "Publication Criteria," "Notes to Contributors," "Manuscript Submissions" or similar.
    
    
11. Not every scholarly journal will exhibit all nine characteristics listed above. Some scholarly journals may only have some of these characteristics; they are still scholarly journals. You may not be able to verify the existence of some characteristics, such as "Editorial Policy." That does not disqualify a journal from being a scholarly journal.

top