Field Guide to Periodical Types

How to tell if an article is from an Academic/Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed

Periodical

Created by Jennifer Freer. Last updated 3/7/2012

What is a periodical?

In the world of research and libraries, a periodical is any information item that comes out on a regular basis.

How often are periodicals published?

• Newspapers are usually published daily.

• Magazines are usually published weeklyor every two weeks or monthly.

• Journals are usually published monthly or every two months or sometimes once ortwice a year.

What types of periodicals are typically involved in research?

• Newspapers for practical event-driven information• General magazines for practical information like

profiles, reflection of events over time.• Trade journals or trade magazines for specialized

industries or practices or processes or interests.• Academic/Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Journals for

studies usually done with some kind of science or social science based methodology.

Basic Periodical CharacteristicsBy Type

Newspapers

Published daily

Usually regional

Pictures & illustrations

Covers many subject areas

Short articles

General Interest Magazines

Pictures & illustrations

Covers many subject areas

Published weekly, monthly,bi-monthly

Long & shortarticles

Trade MagazinesCovers one subject area

Pictures & illustrations

Published weekly, monthly,bi-monthly

Long & shortarticles Targeted at a

specialized audience

Academic/Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Journals

Long articles

Mainly text with some charts, tables, graphs

Published monthly,bi-monthly,bi-annually,annually

Covers one subject area

Targeted at a specialized audience

How to Identify an Academic/Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed

Article

Look at the article’s characteristics

Identifying The Scholarly Journal

Sometimes referred to as:

The Academic Journalor

The Peer-Reviewed Journal

The journal title sometimes, but not always, contains the word journal and is usually rather straightforward.

The journal title will be important for the citation created for this article.

Further identifying information will usually be shown on the cover or right at the article such as:Vol. or VolumeNo. or NumberMonth and Year

All of this will be important for the citation created for this article.

The article title will usually be rather long, will be very descriptive of the content, and many times includes a colon signaling a subtitle.

Very important for the citation created for this article.

The authors are usually listed with their school or organization affiliation.

Author names are important for the citation created for this article, but the affiliations are left out of most citation styles.

The DOI. DOI stands for digital object identifier.

This number is like the DNA of the article. Each article has a unique DOI. It can be used to search for the article on the Internet. The search will usually point you to the publisher.

The idea behind the DOI is that a reader in the present may not have access to the same article databases as the writer or someday in the future an article database may no longer exist.

A reader in the future could locate the article directly from the publisher as long as they have the DOI.

APA requires a DOI but MLA does not.

Most academic articles have an abstract which summarizes the study and the findings.

Academic articles usually have keywords categorizing the article by subject.

Academic articles have an introduction

Academic articles usually review the research and articles published in the past on the same or related topics.

In this example the section is called Prior Studies. Sometimes this is called the Literature Review.

Some academic articles will state the hypothesis of the study using the designation H followed by the number as shown here.

The methodology of the study will be stated. This will describe in-depth how they did their study, survey or experiment.

Academic articles end with a conclusion restating the main points and findings of the article.

Academic articles have a References or Works Cited list providing citations to the articles and items used in the writing of this article.

Most databases will have a PDF of academic/scholarly/peer-reviewed articles. If only the text is available you will still be able to identify the presence of these characteristics.

If you have any questions about identifying what kind of article you have or about how to cite the article, contact the subject specialist for your college or the library Reference Desk.

Created by Jennifer Freer. Last updated 3/7/2012