Is It Scholarly?
How can you tell if you have a scholarly article in your hand?
This chart outlines the basic things you should expect to see.
Some tips:
- Most scholarly articles will be published in academic journals. Magazine and newspaper articles are not scholarly. Some, but not all, books are scholarly -- it depends on who wrote them and how they were published.
- Scholarly resources will always include citations and a bibliography. Other resources usually cite very few or no other sources, and will have only a short bibliography or none at all.
- If you see citations, that doesn't necessarily mean that the source you have is scholarly. If you're not sure, check for information like: the author's name and professional title; where the article was published (was it an academic journal?); who published the article; or who the article was intended for.
- Book reviews and editorials (opinion pieces) are never scholarly, even when they are published in scholarly journals.
- In CrossSearch and most databases, you will have a limiter (see the left side of the screen in CrossSearch) for "scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals".
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