ENGL 104 - Technical Writing - Girardi

Scholarly Journal

• In-Depth- primary account of original findings written by the researcher.  Very specific information.
• Purpose- to advance knowledge and educate.
• Author- Usually a scholar or specialist with subject expertise and credentials provided.
• Written for scholars, researchers, and students.
• Uses specialized terminology or jargon of the field.
• Format- includes the article abstract, goals and objectives, methodology, results (evidence), discussion, conclusion, and bibliography.
• Articles are evaluated by peer-reviewers or referees who are experts in the field.
• References are provided.
• Examples- Journal of Abnormal Psychology, History of Education Quarterly

Popular Magazine

• Secondary discussion of someone else's research, may include personal narrative or opinion, general information.
• Purpose- to entertain or inform
• Author- frequently a journalist paid to write articles, may or may not have subject expertise.
• Written for the general public and interested non-specialists.
• Easily understandable to most readers.
• Format- may include non-standard formatting.  May not present supporting evidence or a conclusion.
• Articles are evaluated by editorial staff not experts in the field.
• References or source materials rarely provided.
• Examples- Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Ladies Home Journal.

Trade Journal or Magazine

• Current news, trends or products in a specific field or industry.
• Purpose- provide practical industry information
• Author- usually industry professional, sometimes a journalist with subject expertise.
• Written for industry professionals and interested non-specialists.
• Uses specialized terminology or jargon of the field, but not as technical as a scholarly journal.
• Format- organized like a journal or newsletter.  Presents evidence from personal experience or common knowledge.
• Articles are evaluated by editorial staff, not peer reviewed.
• References may be provided in brief bibliography, not required.
• Examples- PC World, Restaurant Business, Psychology Today, School Band and Orchestra

Your instructor has asked you to find scholarly articles for your research paper, now what? In this video, we're going to examine three elements to evaluate whether a source is suitable for our purpose of writing a research paper. Every piece of communication has an author, a target audience, and a purpose to the information they're trying to communicate. When we look at that in the context of a scholarly journal article, we can see that as a group, these journals have a fairly serious tone. The covers are informative and not flashy. Let's look inside a scholarly journal at one of the articles. Here is one scholarly article. As we can see this article is 15 pages long. When we look at the author's they tend to be experts, researchers, and scholars in their field. We see here, the authors are affiliated with universities. The authors are writing for an audience of other researchers, scholars and students in that field. These journals are often publishing valuable information for their target audience such as original research studies. Their purpose is to educate and inform. Therefore, these articles are typically longer than five pages since the studies produce a lot of data to fully explain their methods, findings, and conclusions. Because they are writing with a specific audience in mind, they use the specialized vocabulary of that subject field. So if you're a newcomer to this field, you may find it challenging to read and if there are graphics or images included in them, it's because they contribute to understanding the content of the article. They also always include a reference list or bibliography that shows where they got their information from. Now, let's examine author, audience, and purpose in popular sources. These publications have a very different focus than the scholarly ones. We can immediately see the covers are designed to be eye-catching and appealing. When we look at an article in a magazine, we see the authors may be writers with an interest in the topic, but not necessarily experts on that topic. These writers are in the business of selling magazines. Therefore, they seek the widest audience possible, with entertainment and advertising being a purpose of these publications. They want to grab and keep their readers' attention. So the reader will continue to read the publication and hopefully purchase it or some of the advertised products. The purpose of these articles is generally to inform but also entertain. Therefore, the articles are short and engaging often including catchy images and titles. They don't bog down the reader with things like references. They are not going to include original research studies. But they may say things like researchers have found or a recent study. Then summarize the findings in an easy to digest takeaway. As a result you're not going to see a lot of scientific language in these articles because they are gearing the writing toward a non-specialized audience. It's not that this article is bad per se, but it doesn't fit our purpose or our target audience when writing a research paper. Popular articles that reference original research studies may be used as stepping stones to the scholarly articles which contain the research studies. You can use the information found in the popular article, like researchers name, to locate the original source. So just to wrap up, you can use this approach to evaluate any source you come across to determine whether or not it meets your academic research needs. If you would like more information on how to effectively search, check out our other videos or ask a librarian for help.