ENGL 391: Rhetoric of Science (Renshaw)

What is a Scholarly Source?

A scholarly source is written by an expert or experts in the field and is intended for a specialized audience. In essence it uses discipline specific methodology, terminology and theory to discuss and analyze original research. Scholarly sources all go through a process called peer review, where other experts in the field read the article and check it's credibility before it is allowed to be published.

Scientific scholarly sources can either be primary or review research articles. A primary research article is one that focuses on a specific study and is authored by the scientists that conducted that study. A review article (sometimes called a secondary article) compares and comments on multiple studies and is usually not authored by the same person that conducted the experiments. A primary research article is distinct in appearance due to it's methodology section, where the researcher explains how the experiment was conducted.