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 who use scholarly or technical language
• Articles are peer-reviewed *
• Illustrations tend to be charts, graphs, tables
• Articles include bibliographies (works cited pages)
• Few or no advertisements
• Book reviews, interviews, and editorials, even though they may appear in a scholarly journal, are not considered
scholarly articles.
* Article manuscripts are read and reviewed by members of an editorial board who determine whether or not the article is suitable for publication.