Research 101: Library Research Basics

Popular or Scholarly? What's the Difference?

Popular sources:

• include magazine, newspaper, and most web articles
• authors are journalists or reporters
• articles range from a paragraph (news blurb) to a few pages (magazine editorial)
• topic and language target a general, wide-ranging audience 
• sources may be referenced or hyperlinked, but often not formally cited
• articles are on current events or popular topics

Image of the popular newspaper, The New York Times, by Marcus Spiske via unsplash.com.

Scholarly sources:

• include research articles published in peer-reviewed journals and some academic books
• authors are subject experts or researchers
• content is many pages long and written with subject-specific or technical language
• often include charts, graphs, or statistics
• topic targets a specific audience, usually other researchers in an academic field
• sources are cited in footnotes or lengthy bibliographies

Screenshot of a research article published in Journal of Happiness Studies via EBSCOhost.

Parts of a Scholarly Journal (A.K.A. Academic or Peer-Reviewed) Article

Most research articles follow a similar structure and include the following sections. Understanding the different sections of a scholarly article will help you to better understand how to skim and read these types of articles.

• Abstract: A quick summary or overview of the article.
• Introduction: Introduces the reader to the research topic or question. This will sometimes include an overview of what has already been written about the topic and is referred to as a “Literature Review.”
• Methodology/Research Methods/Research Design: This section discusses how the researcher(s) did their testing and often includes their sample size and data collection methods.
• Results: This section will include the raw data from the research study, often in the form of charts, graphs, and tables.
• Discussion: Here is where the author discusses, analyzes, and interprets the results (raw data) and overall implications.
• Conclusion: Not always included, but here is why authors draw conclusions from their studies and sometimes discuss further applications or related research questions.
• References: All scholarly researchers must always cite their sources, just like you! The references list is where you can see all the sources referenced by the article’s author(s).