Transcript: Magazines and Journals

Welcome to the presentation, "What is the difference between a magazine and a scholarly journal?"

Scholarly journals, sometimes called academic or peer-reviewed, differ from magazines in some important ways. First, magazines like Time, US News & World Report, and Newsweek are aimed at the general reading public. These publications are also called popular magazines. Popular magazines don't expect their readers to have studied or be familiar with the subjects being written about, so everything is written in an introductory way. They often use everyday language, contain photographs, and publish shorter articles. The articles are frequently written by staff members who may or may not be experts in a particular field.

Some specialized magazines are called trade publications. These normally are read by people who want to keep up with the latest news and developments in a field.

Scholarly journals expect that their readers already have some knowledge of and interest in the field that the journal covers, be it agriculture, literature, finance, chemistry, history, or other subject area. Articles in these publications often include specialized language, are illustrated with charts and graphs, and are written by researchers in the specific field. These articles are also reviewed by other scholars before they are accepted for publication.

Another important way scholarly journals differ from magazines is that authors of journal articles provide lists of sources they use to support their arguments or obtain their information. The list of sources is called a bibliography (or sometimes References or Works Cited), and is characteristic of scholarship. The bibliography at the end of any scholarly article functions as a road map, allowing readers to return to the sources of information from which the writers drew their conclusions and got their facts.

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