First Year > How to do Research > Types of Articles

Your instructors will want you to use academic or scholarly articles when you research your papers. They may also ask you to find peer-reviewed or refereed journals or articles. How can you identify them?

There are essentially 3 types of articles: Popular, Trade and Academic/Scholarly.

Popular literature usually refers to magazines and newspapers. Examples are: People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Winnipeg Sun, CNN, MSNBC. Magazine or newspaper articles aren't usually considered to be appropriate for university assignments, because they're not based on academic research. Instead they're aimed at a general reading audience, to entertain or inform. They also have a commercial focus.

Trade journals are written for practitioners in a specific field. Articles from trade journals may be acceptable for papers in some courses, particularly in applied disciplines. (e.g. business, engineering, architecture). This is because the articles are often about real-world practices and experiences, written by experts in the field. They share some characteristics, with academic articles like specialized vocabulary and bibliographies, but are not considered to be fully academic.

Academic/scholarly journals have some similarities to magazines and trade journals, since they're also published on a regular basis and contain articles based on a theme, but there are also major differences. Journals:

• publish new research in a specific field or discipline
• inform scholars and researchers
• use very specialized or technical vocabulary and terms
• contain bibliographies or footnotes.

Many journals are "peer-reviewed" which means that before articles can be published, they're reviewed by other experts to confirm that the research is valid. Peer-reviewed journals are considered to be the most reliable form of academic writing. Most academic journals can't be found in Google, and even Google Scholar has limitations.

The following resources will give you more information on the differences between academic journals and other types of articles:

Key Resources
Scholarly vs Popular: Youtube
Popular vs Scholarly Peer-Reviewed Literature, Rutgers
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