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3.3: Popular and scholarly sources

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    Articles will make up the bulk of your college research, so this week's work is important! There are many types of articles, and they generally fit into two categories: popular and scholarly.

    This video (4 minutes) introduces you to the primary differences of popular and scholarly articles: who writes them (authorship) and who they are written for (audience).

    To recap:

    Popular sources are generally written for a broad, general audience.

    • No specialized knowledge is required to understand them.
    • They're called "popular" because they're accessible for all readers (not necessarily because everyone likes them).
    • The bulk of the information we interact with in the media everyday falls into the popular category.
    • Authors are writers, but not necessarily content experts. Articles are typically written by journalists or magazine staff writers.
    • Articles don't typically provide in-depth coverage of topics.

    Scholarly sources are written for experts, researchers, and students.

    • Specialized knowledge is often required to understand them. Content is complex, nuanced, and in-depth. Specialized or discipline-specific language is used.
    • Scholarly sources are long and share good, meaty information.
    • Authors are experts in their fields: researchers conducting primary research, practitioners, professors and scholars.
    • Author credentials are either provided in the article or easy to access. Credentials could include work experience, lived experience, and education.
    • Scholarly sources add value to your learning process as they often provide original research and in-depth analysis at a level popular articles cannot match.
    • Scholarly sources teach you and spur your thinking.

    Peer-reviewed articles are ONE type of scholarly source.Diagram showing that peer-reviewed sources are a type of scholarly source

    But peer-reviewed articles are definitely not the only type of scholarly sources for you to use. Peer-reviewed articles are just one sub-set of scholarly publishing. They happen to fall on the far end of the scholarly continuum.

    Other types of scholarly sources include:

    • Books and eBooks
    • Documentaries and educational films
    • Websites
    • Government reports
    • White papers(opens in new window)
    • Blogs
    • Dissertations
    • In-depth journalism reports
    • Film, book, art critiques or analyses

    You will learn to determine if a source is scholarly or popular.

    3.3: Popular and scholarly sources is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Clackamas Community College Library.