BIOL 105 Honors - Francl - Fall 2009 

Often your professors will specify that you can only use scholarly articles. Library databases as well as Google Scholar include citations to all sorts of sources. Consequently, it's important to be able to determine if an article is a scholary article, or if it's something else.

What is a scholarly article?

A scholarly article is an article that is published in an academic or peer-reviewed journal. It consists of articles evaluated for quality by two to three other scholars in the same discipline. Only a relatively small percentage of the articles submitted are accepted for publication.

What is a popular article?

A popular article is published in a newspaper or magazine. These articles are not subjected to evaluation beyond that of the editor

Source: Published in a peer-reviewed or academic journal. Often these publications have titles that begin with "Journal of" or "Journal of the", or otherwise have "Journal" in the title.

Author(s): Expert(s) in the field. Usually more than one author. Often academics, with their department and university clearly identified with their name.

Audience: The intended reader is other professionals in the field. The language is formal as is the article structure.

Length: Tend to be very long, with the topic of the article treated in great depth.

Graphics: Mostly text; black and white (color is rare); charts, tables, and/or graphs; few images.

Bibliography or reference list: Sources of information used in the article. Provides a way to verify what was claimed by the author. Also a good place to look for sources if you are writing a paper on a similar topic.