Popular information sources contain shorter, less dense articles for the general public. You don't have to be an expert to understand them!  Professional journalists, some of them specializing in a particular topic area, write these for popular magazines. But remember that journalists did not  themselves do the research - they're professional writers doing their best to 'translate' the nuances of research (especially scientific research) for the rest of us who aren't experts.

Good For: A brief, basic introduction to a topic for people who are not a subject expert.

In comparison, scholarly articles are written by scholars who perform research, write up the results of their studies into articles, which often end up being reviewed by their peers, then published in scholarly journals.

Scholars are subject experts.Their articles are meant to inform their fellow scholars in their community, are very dense, and also have discipline-specific 'jargon' as well - which they assume the reader already understands.

Participating in this scholarly publishing cycle is how academics, professional researchers, and scientists both craft a career and push the envelope of human knowledge in our culture. That is the main reason for the traditional perception of scholars and scientists as 'experts', to whom journalists often turn to, for example,  for information for an article or newscast.

That said, there has been a reduction (at least partially politically-induced, but that's another topic) in recent years in the public perception of researchers (especially scientists) as being trustworthy experts.

Good For: All the details of a research study and its results, including any implications for future work in that area.

How to find popular or scholarly articles at the Whittemore Library:

• When you run a search in RamSearch or our databases, you can limit your search results to see just scholarly, and even just peer-reviewed scholarly articles....or  limit your results to just magazines / periodicals / trade journals instead.