| Criteria |
Scholarly Journals |
Popular Magazines |
| Overall look |
Plain cover and paper. |
Eye-catching cover. |
| Illustrations |
Primarily text with few pictures. Tables, graphs and diagrams are included. |
Color photographs and pictures. |
| Advertisements |
If there are ads, they are for other scholarly materials, conferences, or discipline-related products. |
Colorful ads for general commercial products. |
| Audience |
Scholars, researchers, and practitioners. |
General public. |
| Authors |
Experts in the field.
Authors named and institutional affiliations given. |
Magazine staff members, journalists, freelance writers with an interest in the topic.
Authors may be anonymous. |
| Editors |
Editorial board of outside scholars for referee or peer review process. |
Editors work for the publisher. |
| Publishers |
Often scholarly or professional organization, university press, or publisher specializing in scholarly materials. |
Commercial or for profit publisher. |
| Content |
Research projects with method and statistical analysis; literary criticism; theory. |
News, personalities, features articles, and topics of general interest. |
| Length |
Long and contain an abstract. |
Usually short and do not contain an abstract. |
| Language |
Uses terminology, jargon and language of the discipline covered.
Assumes reader has similar scholarly background. |
Easy to read, simple language used.
Assumes reader has little background. |
| Bibliography |
Include a bibliography, references, footnotes, notes, or works cited. |
Generally do not include a bibliography, references, footnotes, notes, or works cited. |
| Coverage |
In-depth and very narrowly focused on the field of research. |
Superficial and broadly focused. |
