Popular and Scholarly Articles
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Depending on your assignment, you may find yourself needing popular articles, scholarly articles, or both for your research.
Popular Articles (Magazines, Newspapers, some Websites):
- Are often written by journalists or other non-academic writers.
- Written for the general public.
- Are often shorter than academic articles and edited for readability.
- May discuss studies without citing them.
Examples: Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, LifeHacker.com
Scholarly Articles (Journals, Conference Proceedings):
- Are written by faculty, professionals, researchers or scholars (biologists, programmers, sociologists, doctors, artists) for their colleagues.
- Use scholarly, professional or technical language.
- Are longer articles about research or evaluations of research.
- Include citations for sources and studies.
- Are often peer reviewed.
Examples: Nature, Computational Biology, Perspectives on Political Science