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Sociology: Popular vs. Scholarly

Popular Resources

Magazines and newspapers are considered "popular" resources. They are usually considered reliable, but are not peer-reviewed.

Popular resources usually have the following characteristics:

   Written for a general audience

   Written by a staff of writers

   Lots of color illustrations

   Contain advertisements

  

Scholarly Resources

Books in the UIW Libraries are considered scholarly resources. 

Journals are considered scholarly resources.  Other terms used to describe journals are academic, peer-reviewed, or refereed.  Journals share the following characteristics:

   Published for a highly educated audience

   Articles are written by subject matter experts and may be peer-reviewed*

   Illustrations tend to be charts, graphs, tables

   Articles include bibliographies (works cited pages)

   Few or no advertisements

* Article manuscripts are read and reviewed by members of an editorial board who determine whether or not the article is suitable for publication.  See the following tab Peer Review Process for more information. 

Staff LADR