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Academic Sources

What are scholarly or academic sources?

When an assignment calls for scholarly sources, typically that means academic books and articles from scholarly journals.

Quick rule of thumb of telling whether a source is scholarly is to look for a works cited list or bibliography in which the author refers to the work of other researchers.

What is Peer-Reviewed?

Some scholarly articles are called peer-reviewed as they are critically evaluated for originality, quality of research, and clarity of presentation by the author's peers (experts who do research in the same field).

What are Scholarly Sources?

 

 
Newspapers
Magazines
Journals
Author
Staff writers;not always identified
Journalist or layperson
Experts in area of study; researchers and scholars
Audience
General
General
Professors, researchers, practitioners and students
Content
Current events   
Interviews, general information, advertisement
In-depth research on specialized or technical topics; usually includes an abstract; academic book reviews
Purpose
Current, topical and local information
Entertain, provide general and popular information
Provide information about original research or experiements; report new findings in field of research
Frequency
Daily
Weekly
Months or years of preparation before publishing
Examples
New York Times, Washington Post   
Time, Newsweek, Business Week
Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, Urban Studies, Science
Is it scholarly/academic?
NO
NO
YES!