What is the difference between a scholarly journal and a magazine?
Answer
In a nutshell? Magazines are written by journalists and professional writers and accept all sorts of advertisements. Time, Newsweek, Vogue, Sports Illustrated and Scientific American are all magazines.
Scholarly journals are written by academics (your professors!) and the articles are generally peer reviewed by other academics before publication. Think of peer review as a sort of quality control, where other experts have read (and commented/corrected) the articles before they are published. Scholarly journals are often published by scholarly societies (such as the American Chemical Society or the American Historical Association) or university presses (Johns Hopkins University Press, for example).
Generally speaking, most professors expect you to use scholarly journals for your research papers. You can find scholarly journal articles using our library databases. Ask a librarian for help getting started or use a subject research guide.
