Popular Magazines VS Trade Magazines
VS Scholarly Journals

The following is a list of General Criteria that can be used to distinguish between popular magazines, trade magazines, and scholarly journals. Some journals do not meet all the criteria in one category. For example, Scientific American, which has glossy pages and color pictures, contains both scholarly articles as well as those geared to a more general audience. Accountability and content of the specific article are the key criteria used to determine if an article is scholarly. See Evaluation Clues for Articles Taken from the Web for cases when you do not have an entire issue to examine.

CRITERIA	POPULAR MAGAZINES	TRADE MAGAZINES	SCHOLARLY JOURNALS
Appearance	eye-catching cover glossy paper pictures and illustrations in color each issue starts with page 1	cover depicts industrial setting glossy paper pictures and illustrations in color each issue starts with page 1	plain cover plain paper black/white graphics and illustrations pages consecutive throughout each volume
Audience To identify (over 150,000 titles) see PubList.com	nonprofessionals	members of a specific business, industry or organization	researchers and professionals
Content	personalities, news, and general interest articles articles written by staff, may be unsigned	industry trends, new products or techniques, and organizational news articles written by staff or contributing authors	research projects, methodology, and theory articles written by contributing authors
Accountability	editorial review no bibliographies	editorial review may have short bibliographies	peer review/refereed has bibliographies
Advertisements	heavy	moderate all or most are trade related	few or none
Examples	Gourmet New York Psychology Today Time	Chilton's Food Engineering Public Management APA Monitor Advertising Age	Journal of Food Science Urban Studies Journal of Applied Psychology Journal of Extension

A Note about Peer Review

"Peer review" refers to the policy of having experts in the field examine journal articles before acceptance for publication. Peer review insures that the research described in a journal's articles is sound and of high quality. Sometimes the term "refereed" is used instead of peer review. Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory, located behind the Information Desk, has a list of refereed journals. However, not all scholarly journals are on this list. For unlisted journals, examine the editorial policy, instructions to authors, and/or the editorial board list of members to determine if the editorial boards and/or consultants are experts in the field.

No matter what type of journal an article comes from, be sure to evaluate it. Use How to Evaluate Journal Articles as a guide.

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URL: http://manta.library.colostate.edu/howto/poplr.html • Modified: 2008-02-06

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