Scholarly sources generally have the following characteristics:
- Authors: authors tend to be researchers or experts with PhDs in an academic field
- Language: targets a specific audience and use subject-specific language or terms
- Content: articles report on a study, original research, or experiments and often contain raw data in the form of graphs, charts, or statistics
- Methods/References: authors detail the methodology of their study and cite their sources in length footnotes or bibliographies
- Publishing: articles/books are reviewed by a board of editors (peer-review) before being published in professional/academic journals or a University Press