You may find it in the assignment criteria that you should use scholarly resources or articles from scholarly journals, instead of popular resources. What are scholarly resources? What are popular resources? What are the differences between them? Are popular resources bad to use? Use this guide to learn the differences and find out more.
Characteristics of Popular Resources
| Examples: | Astronomy, Business Week, The Economists, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, or USA Today. |
| Authors: | Generalists, professional writers, news commentators, or journalists |
| Audience: |
General public, without the requirement of special knowledge or educational background |
| Purpose: |
Entertaining, advocating or sharing |
| Language style: | Easy to read, opinion-based |
| Length: | Short with trending social jargons |
| Design: | Visually attractive and flashy, including glossy photographs, illustrations, and commercial advertisements |
| Citation: | No formal citation but may include sources of texts |
| Publishing process: | Reviewed by in-house editors or not at all |
Characteristics of Scholarly Resources
| Examples: | Nature, Modern Fiction Studies, Musical Quarterly, The New England Journal of Medicine, or The Social Science Journal |
| Authors: | Scholars, researchers, or experts in the field; usually with lists of their affiliated institutions |
| Audience: | Other scholars, researchers, or experts, including professionals in the field and students |
| Purpose: | To communicate research findings and scholarly ideas or provide education |
| Language style: | Academic style; objective and neutral; includes technical language and discipline-specific terms |
| Length: | Lengthy |
| Design: | Serious outlook; mostly texts, including tables, charts, or illustrations; basic structure includes abstract, keywords, introduction, literature review, method, data collection and analysis, discussion, and conclusion |
| Citation: | Including references or bibliographical notes by following a specific style, such as APA, MLA, Chicago or others |
| Publishing process: |
Blind reviewed or referred by other experts in the same or similar knowledge field |
Before you use popular resources, you should have a clear understanding what resources are required by your assignments. Some assignments specifically ask you to use popular resources like editorial essays; some ask you to use peer-reviewed articles only. Popular resources face a different audience but it doesn't mean they are not useful. Some times, popular resources can become sources of inspiration of formal researches.
