SOCL 269: Education & Society (Weiner): Databases and Journals

A scholarly article is one written by an expert for other experts. A peer-reviewed article is a scholarly article which has been reviewed and approved by a group of experts (the author's peers). 

For your research, your secondary sources should be scholarly. 

Some tips for identifying scholarly articles:

• Most scholarly articles are published in academic journals or edited collections. Articles from magazines, trade journals, or newspapers are not scholarly.  However, you can certainly use them as primary sources. 
   
• Scholarly articles will always include citations and a bibliography. Other articles generally include few or no citations, and will include only a brief bibliography or notes section if any at all. 
   
• Not all resources with citations are scholarly (for example, Wikipedia is not). 
   
• If you're not sure about a source, check for information like: the author's name/credentials; the publication it appears in or the publisher;  or the intended audience. 
   
• Book reviews and editorials are never scholarly, even when published in scholarly journals.