Differences Between Journals and Magazines
Scholarly journals are often called peer reviewed or refereed journals. They include articles that have undergone a review process by selected experts in the field before being accepted for publication. They have a serious format and usually have charts and graphs to illustrate concepts. Sources are cited with footnotes and/or a bibliography. Scholars or researchers in a specific discipline or field write the articles. The material uses the terminology and language of the discipline and, the reader is expected to have a similar background. The purpose of these journals is to report or make research available to the scholarly world. Many of these journals are published by a professional organization. Use scholarly journals if you need verifiable and highly credible information. Scholarly journals often feature primary research with detailed analysis.
General interest or popular magazines do NOT undergo peer review. They usually have an attractive format with photos and illustrations. They are frequently written for a general audience by a staff or scholarly writer. The language is simple and easy to understand. The purpose of these publications is to provide general information, entertain, and sometimes sell products. They are published by commercial enterprises for profit. Use popular interest journals if you only require general information about a topic. Do not expect to find substantial detail or in-depth analysis.
Peer Reviewed or Refereed Journals:
- American Journal of Nursing
- New England Journal of Medicine
- Journal of Biological Chemistry
General or Popular Magazines:
- Newsweek
- Prevention Magazine
- Science Today
- Psychology Newsletter
Characteristics of a Scholarly Publication in the Digital Age
Web publishing has complicated the identification of scholarly communications. Traditional cues such as publisher, press, and durability are no longer constant in the world of digital, scholarly communications. Findings from Leah Halliday’s work with scholars, librarians, and researchers has identified three characteristics:
Trustworthiness
- Scholarly Publications, such as articles and books, should not be changed after digital distribution.
- Different versions should be clearly identified so as to alert the community to changes.
- To satisfy all potential interest, trustworthiness should be based on 'institutionalised' measures such as peer review and this process should be evident to the community.
- Each publication should have at least one identifiable author.
Publicity
- The potential audience must be made aware that the publication exists. Libraries are great partners for publicity.
- The publication should have metadata containing a minimum set of information, preferably including information about all versions. Metadata will enable others to find it.
Accessibility
- The author must intend that the publication be made publicly available in a durable form over the long term.
- The publication must be durably recorded on some medium.
- The publication must be reliably accessible and retrievable over time. Supporting institutions have a responsibility to support long-term accessibility.
- There should be a commitment not to withdraw the publication by the author(s).
- The publication must be publicly available, i.e. available to any member of the public on demand as of right, whether for payment of a fee or not.
- The publication should have stable identifiers.
Source: Halliday, L. (2001). Scholarly communication, scholarly publication and the status of emerging formats.Information Research, 6(4).
Attribution: Information Literacy Tutorial by Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at guides.library.uwm.edu
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