"Scholarly articles," "trade journals," "popular magazines," and "newspapers" are all referred to as "articles" - pretty confusing, right?!

Key differences among these types of articles include the editorial processes used to produce them as well as the why (purpose) and for whom (audience) they are created. These major differences result in differences of writing style, language used, format such as headings used (if any), and types of evidence used in laying out the story or the argument, among other characteristics. For the purposes of this tutorial there are two editorial approaches of interest: Peer-Review which is used in academic publishing, and the professional standards, ethics, and legal guidelines used in journalism which are more commonly used by popular, trade, and news publications.

Academic Publishing

Popular, Trade, News Publishing

Peer Review in 3 Minutes

(a short video)

5 Core Values of Journalism

(2:54 minute video from the Ethical Journalism Network)

Types of Scholarly Articles

(a short video)

Society of Professional Journalists

Code of Ethics

(a web page)

Search Tips:

Finding Peer Reviewed Articles in NUSearch
(webpage)

Search Tips:

NUSearch: Tips for Finding News Articles
(video ~7.5 min)

Contemporary Newspapers @
Northwestern University Libraries (~8 mins)

While your faculty and instructors often specify that you use peer reviewed articles in your work, using a variety of types of sources is valid. Remember that the different editorial processes produce articles that present different kinds of information which can be useful to your learning about a topic.

Peer-Reviewed articles present the results of formalized research, using the methods of the discipline (subject area), in order to answer a research question. View this short video about Types of Scholarly Articles for descriptions of types of scholarly articles, and hints for how to recognize them.
Popular, Trade or News articles present the facts (who, what, where, when), often in the form of a narrative story, which may be about a person, event, process, or phenomenon.

The timeline framework provided in this short video on The Information Cycle describes how different types of sources contribute to your research by emphasizing how different types of information is produced, for what audiences, and for what purposes.

When looking at individual articles that you find by searching library databases, none will be clearly marked as one type of article or another. There are search techniques you can use to narrow your search results to the type of article (or other types of sources, depending on the database) you need, but those search techniques have limitations. You still need to be able to evaluate each item and determine not only its credibility, but its suitability for your work.

ACT UP (Authority, Currency, Truth, Unbiased, Privilege)
An acronym helpful for remembering evaluative criteria for interrogating sources, explained on this handout (.docx format) and in this short video (by Dawn Stahura).