Popular Magazines vs. Trade Magazines vs. Scholarly Journals

 

The following are a list of General Criteria that can be used to distinguish between popular magazines, trade magazines and scholarly journals. Some journals do not meet all the criteria in one category. Accountability and content of the specific article are the key criteria used to determine if an article is scholarly.

	Popular Magazines	Trade Magazines	Scholarly Journals
Appearance	Print: eye-catching cover glossy paper pictures and illustrations in color each issue starts with page 1 Web Site: "flashy"	Print: cover depicts industrial setting glossy paper pictures and illustrations in color each issue starts with page 1 Web Site: Vary from "flashy" to utilitarian	Print: plain cover plain paper black/white graphics and illustrations pages are consecutive throughout the volume Web Site: utilitarian
Audience	nonprofessionals	members of a specific business, industry or organization	researchers and professionals
*Content	personalities, news, and general interest articles articles written by staff, may be unsigned	industry trends, new products or techniques, and organizational news articles written by staff or contributing authors	research projects, methodology, and theory articles written by contributing authors
*Accountability	editorial review no bibliographies	editorial review may have short bibliographies	peer review/refereed bibliographies always present
Advertisements	heavy	moderate (all or most are trade related)	few or none
Examples	Discover (Q1 .D57) Economist (HG11 .E2) Gourmet (TX1 .G75) Money (HG179 .M59) Psychology Today (BF1 .P76x) Sports Illustrated (GV561 .S733) Time (AP2 .T37)	Advertising Age (HF5801 .A276 FOLIO) American Teacher (L11 .A852 FOLIO) APA Monitor (BF1 .A54) Chilton's Food Engineering (TX341 .F87) Chemical and Engineering News (TP1 .C35) Publisher's Weekly (z1219 .P98) Supermarket News (HD9321.1 .S863 FOLIO)	AIChE Journal (TP1 .A634) American Journal of Sociology (HM1 .A7) The Historian (D1 .H22) Journal of Applied Psychology (BF1 .J65) Journal of Food Science (TX1 .F65) Journal of Macroeconomics (HB1 .J67) Political Geography (JC316 .P615x)

A Note About Peer Review

"Peer review" refers to the policy of experts in the field examining journal articles before acceptance for publication. Peer review insures that the research described in a journal's articles is sound and of high quality. Sometimes the term "refereed" is used instead of peer review.

 

ulrichsweb.com indicates if a journal is considered scholarly and if it's peer-reviewed. Search the for journal title using the "Title (exact)" search option. On the screen with the search results there will be an icon () next to the title when the journal is referreed/peer reviewed, and line saying "Referreed: Yes" on the screen with the complete information. For journals not in the Ulrich's database, determine if the journal is peer-reviewed by examining the editorial policy, instructions to authors, and/or the editorial board list of members to determine if the editorial boards and/or consultants are experts in the field.