You will often be asked to use scholarly, peer-reviewed, or academic articles in your research. These types of articles are written by professionals who are working in different fields, including many of the professors you are taking classes from at Fresno State. They often present original research or analysis and are reviewed by other professionals in the field ("peer review") before they are published in scholarly journals. You can find scholarly articles using the library's OneSearch tool or going into specific databases that the library subscribes to. You can also find these types of articles using Google Scholar.
The table below shows you how articles from scholarly journals compare to the popular magazine articles that you are probably more familiar with.
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Type of Source
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Popular magazines
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Scholarly Journals
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Audience
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General public; use language understood by the average reader | For students, scholars, researchers; use specialized language of a discipline |
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Content
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News items, feature stories, editorials and opinion pieces | Original research, theory; may include an abstract |
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Appearance
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Visual, lots of advertising, color, photos, short articles with no bibliographies or references | Little or no advertising, lengthy articles, charts and tables, bibliographies & references |
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Authors
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May or may not be named, frequently a staff writer, not a subject expert | Authors are specialists, articles are signed, credentials such as degrees and university affiliation are given. |
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Purpose
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News, general information or entertainment, opinion | To disseminate research findings, publicize current topics in the field and professional issue |
The video below is a great introduction to what makes scholarly, peer-reviewed articles unique and how you can identify them.
There are certain techniques you can use for reading these types of articles. It's important to first understand some of their major attributes. Although articles in different disciplines may look different, the video below can help you become familiar with some of the things you might see.
Peer-reviewed articles have already been published, and have gone through a review and editing process (unlike web sites or popular articles). But it is still a good idea to evaluate them. Some scholarly journals are of higher quality than others. Additionally, not every scholarly article you find on your topic will be a good source for the research you are doing.