Types of Periodicals

Here is a chart that summarizes some of the major distinctions among periodicals. Others may make finer distinctions. I have seen some charts with as many as seven different columns.

	Popular/General	Popular/Opinion	Scholarly	Trade
Purpose	Current events, information, popular culture	Current events, persuasion, outlet for expressing opinion	Original research; discipline related; refereed, peer-reviewed	Current trends and forecasts; news and products; jobs
Language	Simple, non-technical, for the most part	Some simple, others more demanding, but still non-technical	Academic, jargon-filled, technical	Jargon-filled, mix of breezy and technical
Audience	Wide	Some wide, others focused	Academic, research communities	Focused to discipline
Authors	Journalists, freelance writers	Journalists, pundits; freelance writers	Researchers, professors, scholars	Practitioners, journalists who cover the field
Features	No bibliographic citations; usually short articles with little or no in-depth coverage (although some literary and cultural magazines will include lengthy in-depth feature articles); pictures, ads, often slick and colorful	No bibliographic citations; usually short articles, but often some more in-depth coverage, as well; most have pictures, ads; varying degrees of color and slickness	Bibliographic citations; lengthy, in-depth articles; graphs and charts, few or no ads, little color	Some have bibliographic citations, some won't; articles vary in length, with mix of news updates, features, and possibly research articles; pictures, often of people; charts; focused ads; color; calendars,
Publishers	Commercial publishers	Commercial publishers; interest groups	Universities, scholarly presses, some commercial publishers, research organizations	Commercial publishers, trade associations
Types	Newspapers, tabloids, newletters, popular magazines, literary magazines	Newspapers, newletters, special interest magazines, commentary & opinion magazines	Different academic disciplines	Different professions, trades, and industries

This chart may help you distinguish among the different publications you see, but there are quite a few magazines and journals that do not quite fit either classification. Some professional journals include coverage of trends, upcoming events and news of personalities, even include advertising, but also include scholarly articles. The New Yorker and The Atlantic are two examples of popular magazines that will have lengthy feature articles. All types might include book reviews, and advertisements placed by book publishers show up in all types of periodicals. Some journals and even some magazines, however, accept no advertising. Titles of periodicals confuse matters as well. Many magazines have the word "journal" included in the title, and some journals call themselves magazines.

So which ones should I use?

Not all periodicals are appropriate for research, and different kinds of research may require different periodicals. You must read, analyze, and evaluate articles before you use them for research. Popular magazines may be easily read, but when a subject is "popularized," important information may omitted. A magazine writer, who is not a professional in a subject field and is usually working under a tight deadline, is more likely to make mistakes in presenting the information, miss points, emphasize different aspects, or glide over distinctions that scholars may think are important. The peer review process of scholarly journals helps towrds quality control, since the article has been judged by one or more experts or specialists in the discipline who have accepted it as worth publishing. An article may be reviewed and revised many times before it finally appears in print. Scholarly journals may present problems too. The peer review process is not infallible, of course, and can be very slow. From the time an article is first writtn to the time it is published, months or years may go by. You should also realize that through the medium of the journal page, battles have been waged by rival theorists and academics. Therefore it is as important when using scholarly articles as any other source not to take just one person's word. An additional difficult with scholarly articles is that they can be long and detailed and difficult to understand. Scholars are notorious for using a specialized vocabulary or jargon, so it may take a careful or multiple readings to fully understand what the authors are saying.

The presence of color and advertising is not a sure indicatation that a periodical does not contain peer reviewed articles. Many staid, dignified, and prestigous journals, indeed, are very dull in their appearance and limit or exclude advertising, but that is not always true. In the medical field particularly, there are premier research journals that include a large amount of advertising, especially by drug manufactures. In some circles this has become a rather controversial topic.

Research articles

For a particular assignment, you may be required to find research articles. Some professors call them empirical studies, instead. Both are terms that include articles that report on original research based on critical or scientific observation, investigation, or experiment. When your professor requires research articles, you will need to use scholarly journals. However, your search does not end there. Not all of the articles in a scholarly journal fit that definition. You will need to distinguish different types of articles found in them. In scholarly journals, you will encounter research articles, review articles, theoretical articles, book reviews, brief reports, commentaries, and other things as well. All have their value, and review articles, especially, can be treasures, since they include summaries or evaluations of current research in a field that can lead you to a dozen or more different research articles. However, a review article will not include original research and is not an empirical study.

How can you tell if an article in a scholarly journal is a research article? The best clue is evidence of a research process -- signs that an investigation has been conducted. Research articles have a special format and will include different sections that are usually very well labeled. Check the abstract or introduction; they will tell you very clearly the nature of the article. In addition, look for section headings METHODS, RESULTS, and DISCUSSION. Since these sections indicate different stages of research, their presence identifies an article as a research article or an empirical study.

Trade and popular magazines in research

Not all research assignments require empirical studies. In many disciplines -- business, for example -- the research emphasis is often on analysis of recent developments, processes, and trends, or examinations of reports by someone in the industry or profession of "how we done it good." Professionals working in the field rather than scholars and academics, are often the authors of these kind of articles. As a result, for some research, trade publications can be as important as scholarly journals, depending on the nature of the assignment.

For research involving a current event, the popular press may be the only sources you can find. You won't find scholarly articles written, for example, about the most recent anti-war rallies. For some topics the mainstream press may even be lacking, and the alternative press will be the only source you can find that tackle an issue. It is not only for current events that popular magazines and newspapers are recommended. For a news event from many years ago, newspapers and magazines are excellent sources, even though they are not "scholarly." News immediately becomes history, so following the presidential campaigns of Abraham Lincoln as they were originally reported in the New York Times may give you a different insight than you would get from reading a biography of Lincoln.