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Research Tutorial

Activity: Scholarly, Popular, or Trade?

When conducting research it is important to know the difference between scholarly articles, popular articles, and trade articles. 

How can you tell if a resource is scholarly or not? Consider the following elements:

  • Author - Who is the author? Are they an expert in their field? Do they have a PhD and/or are affiliated with a College or University?
  • Publisher - Who published the source? Is it an academic/scholarly journal or publisher?
  • Bonus - Peer-review - Is the source peer-reviewed? This often requires looking on the journal's website or in the book's description. 

Note - answering these questions often requires searching on Google.

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Unless otherwise noted, this guide is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License).

CCBYNCSA Content on this page was adapted from University of Washington Library's Savvy Info Consumers: What are Scholarly, Popular, & Trade Publications? and University of Texas Libraries Popular, Scholarly, or Trade? The activity 'Scholarly, Popular, or Trade' was adapted from KPU Library's guide Scholarly Publications, which was adapted from “Teach Yourself: Understanding Scholarly Sources” created by North Carolina State University Libraries. All content is published under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.