How do I know that I have found a Scholarly Article?

Periodicals serve a variety of purposes for a wide-ranging audience. They also vary in their level of scholarship. The University Libraries subscribes to periodicals that have all of these qualities:

• Popular magazines, such as People or Time Magazine, and most newspapers are the least scholarly resources for articles. They are intended for the general public and not necessarily for scholarly study. Although they employ fact checkers in their publication process, they provide no visible means of verification for the reader.

• A bit more scholarly is The New York Times, which has often been called "the newspaper of record." It often publishes speeches, and thus is a good source for primary material. Historians or researchers for other publications often use The New York Times in order to find quotations or to verify facts.

• More scholarly still are journals that are specific to a field of study. They might contain lists of references, footnotes, or endnotes.

• The most scholarly articles may be found in publications that are refereed or peer-reviewed, which means that they have been evaluated and approved by scholarly peers or experts in a particular field. The reference desk on the second floor of the library has a list of journals that are peer-reviewed.