Think about what kind of information you're looking for. Where are you likely to find that information? Who knows about your topic? Whose expertise do you trust? You might find information in a variety of sources. Some sources will be more scholarly and aimed at an academic audience, while others will be more general and aimed at non-experts. All of these types of sources have different purposes and uses and can provide different insight for your research.
Scholarly and popular sources are two types of sources you may find and use in your research. They have different characteristics and purposes that will be reviewed in this section.
A scholarly or peer-reviewed source has been written by an expert in the subject (ex., a professor or other researcher), and has been reviewed and approved by a group of other experts (their peers). It is written for an academic audience and will usually present original research in a specific field. The NC State Libraries provide an interactive diagram of a scholarly article that you can view to see the different components. An example of a scholarly source is a research study published in an academic journal.
A popular source is written for a wider, more general audience, and may provide a more broad overview of a topic. The author is not necessarily an expert in the specific subject and is usually a general journalist or freelance writer. These articles do not go through peer review and may be edited by a single editor or editorial board. An example of a popular source is an article in a magazine.
The chart below goes into more detail about how to distinguish between these two types of sources.
| Popular Sources | Scholarly Sources | |
|---|---|---|
| Author/Audience | Written by journalists or freelance writers for a general audience. | Written by scholars or experts in the field for other scholars (including students) and experts. |
| Writing Style | Language is more general and simple, may explain key concepts and terms, does not assume the reader already has knowledge about the subject. | Language is more technical and complex, assumes the audience is familiar with key concepts and terms in the field. |
| Review/Editing Process | Reviewed by general editors. | Reviewed by experts or peer-reviewed. |
| Subject Matter | Often discuss current events and/or entertaining topics. One issue might cover many subject areas. | Report original research in a specific field of study. |
| Illustrations | Often have colorful photographs. | Often have charts and graphs showing data from a study. |
| Advertising | Have advertising, including for products and services that are unrelated to the article topic or field. | Has little or no advertising. Ads are typically for related journals, books, and conferences in the scholarly field. |
| Citations | Do not include citations or include few citations. Citations may be links to external sources and not in a formal citation style. |
Have both in-text citations and a works cited list, reference list, or bibliography at the end of the article. |
| Examples | Time Magazine, The New York Times, Business Weekly, Psychology Today | New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Geoscience, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Annual Review of Psychology |
Scholarly books do not follow the traditional format of a novel, where the book is an entire story that must be read from start to finish. Often you will find edited volumes, which are books made up of a collection of related chapters that address a common topic or theme. Each chapter may have different authors, and the book has an editor or editors who have put it all together.
To use these books in your research, you would treat the individual chapter as a source. It is a standalone source that will have a complete introduction, argument, and conclusion. You do not have to read every single chapter in an edited book to understand the research and argument of a single chapter.
The e-book Routledge Handbook of Gender and Water Governance is an example of an edited book. On the cover, the editors names are listed after the phrase "Edited by." This means they are the people who collected the different chapters and organized them within the book. They may have also written or contributed to chapters within the book, but they were also responsible for the larger organization, editing, and publication.
The Table of Contents will list each chapter and its author(s). Each chapter will be on a unique topic and by a different author. They may be organized into parts that cover certain themes within the larger topic of the book. An edited book will typically have an introduction written by the editors, which introduces the topic of the book and how it is organized. Reading the introduction can help you understand what different themes are included and may point you towards specific chapters you find interesting.
When you find a book chapter that connects to your research, treat it the same way you would a scholarly journal article. The chapter is a source on its own and it is in conversation with the other chapters in the book. You can use just one chapter from an edited book, or you may find more than one that suit your topic.
When citing these sources, treat the chapter itself as the source you are citing. It is similar to a journal article: Your main citation is for the article and the authors of the article, plus some information about the journal as the publisher.
Each major citation format has guidance for citing book chapters. They are linked below.
Below are examples of book chapter citations in different formats for chapter 6 of the example e-book above. The author and title of the chapter are listed as the primary citation, with the information about the book towards the end in the place where publishers are cited.
Truelove, Y. (2025). Embodying the urban political ecology of water: Three analytical approaches to urban water insecurity. In T. Acevedo-Guerrero, L. Bossenbroek, I. Leonardelli, M. Zwarteveen, & S. Kulkarni (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Gender and Water Governance (pp. 89-97). Routledge.
Truelove, Yaffa. "Embodying the Urban Political Ecology of Water: Three Analytical Approaches to Urban Water Insecurity." Routledge Handbook of Gender and Water Governance, edited by Tatiana Acevedo-Guerrero et al., Routledge, 2025, pp. 89-97.
Truelove, Yaffa. "Embodying the Urban Political Ecology of Water: Three Analytical Approaches to Urban Water Insecurity." In Routledge Handbook of Gender and Water Governance, edited by Tatiana Acevedo-Guerrero, Lisa Bossenbroek, Irene Leonardelli, et al. Routledge, 2025.
When conducting research, you may be asked to find peer reviewed sources. Peer review is a process used by many academic journals to make sure they publish high quality research that has been vetted by experts. In peer review, researchers submit their manuscript to an academic journal for publishing. The journal editor then sends that article to a group of reviewers who are experts in the field. Those reviewers read the draft and look critically at things like the research methods, the structure of the manuscript, the quality of the research, and whether it is a good fit for the journal. Reviewers send feedback to the original researchers who can then edit the draft based on that feedback. At the end of this process, the reviewers recommend to the journal editor if the article should be published or rejected and the journal editor makes a decision based on the reviewers' feedback.
Peer review is not necessarily going to confirm that an article or study is factual or correct. Reviewers aren't reviewing for accuracy, but are checking that the methodology is sound and the conclusions are logical based on the information the author(s) provided. Journals use this process as a sort of quality control for what they publish - by having multiple experts look at a manuscript, they can filter out research that doesn't meet a journal's standards.