Scholarly journals are publications written by experts—such as researchers, professors, or professionals—for other experts in their field. They are usually published by universities, academic societies, or professional associations. These articles often present the results of original research or offer in-depth analysis on a specialized topic. Most importantly, scholarly articles go through a peer-review process, where other scholars evaluate the quality, accuracy, and credibility of the research before it is published.
In contrast, popular sources—like magazines, newspapers, blogs, or general websites—are written for the general public. They are often created by journalists or freelance writers and may not go through a rigorous review process. While they can be useful for background information or current events, popular sources typically lack the depth, citations, and academic rigor required for college-level research.
Ready to start searching for scholarly journal articles? You will find them in our EBSCO and JSTOR databases. Connect to those through the Popular Databases link on the library homepage.
Resources found within databases are generally more acceptable to use for your assignments than material found on the Internet because they come from reputable magazines, newspapers, and journals. Library databases such as Ebsco and JSTOR are used to find peer-reviewed / scholarly journal articles, not available through Internet search engines like Google.
Scholarly sources are written by experts and scholars working in the field that you are researching. They often go through a "peer-review" process before being published. Check out our Scholarly Journals vs. Popular Magazines page to learn more about the peer-review process and the difference between peer-reviewed journals and popular magazines.
Try starting with these databases to search for articles in journals, magazines, and newspapers.
Ebsco Collection of Databases - Search from a wide range of research databases for magazine and journal articles. The easiest way to search for journal articles is limit your results to peer-reviewed, academic journal sources, either using in an advanced search, or in the left sidebar of your search results.
JSTOR - Includes only scholarly journal articles covering many disciplines within the Humanities and Social Sciences including: Anthropology, Archaeology, Area Studies, Art & Art History, Asian Studies, Education, Feminist & Women’s Studies,History, Language & Literature, Linguistics, Music, Performing Arts, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Psychology, Sociology, and Religion.
Evaluating the authority, usefulness and reliability of the information you find is an important step in the process of academic research. The questions you should be asking yourself about a source are similar whether you are using books, articles, multimedia content, or websites. Check out the resources on this page to be sure you select credible, quality sources for your research assignments.
Evaluating Sources: General Guidelines - Purdue University (OWL)
Watch this short video on Evaluating Sources (4 min.) from MSJC's Online Library Orientation
Use our Chat service or Email form to get help with our databases.
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