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Pollak Library

Communication Sciences and Disorders: Evaluating Sources

Subject guide for Communication Sciences and Disorders

Popular vs. Scholarly Literature

Simply stated, all periodicals are publications that are published periodically. Periodicals are not all the same. Periodicals are presented in different mediums, they utilize different publication processes, and they appeal to a variety of readerships. Below you will find three types of periodicals. You will also find some distinctions between what the academic community considers popular and scholarly literature. 

Popular Sources: Newspapers and Magazines

  • Written for a general audience, using language that is easy to understand as well as pictures and advertisements.
  • Good for current news, opinions, and statistics.
  • Contain articles regarding timely subject matter.
  • Articles are usually written by reporters and columnists rather than specialists.
  • Articles may contain sources for authenticity, but newspaper articles do not contain footnotes or reference lists. 
  • Subject matter can be either general or focused on a particular topic. 

Scholarly Sources: Journals

  • Communicate scholarly research regarding a specific field of study.
  • Are often only published after being peer reviewed by other experts in the field.
  • Research is documented throughout the article.
  • Reference to other research in the field is documented.
  • Scholarly journals can contain research articles of an empirical nature. These usually include abstracts, introductions, methods, results, discussions, conclusions, and references. 

 

Adapted by Joy Lambert from Matt Mallard and Suellen Cox

Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Journals

Do you need to confirm if your scholarly article comes from a peer-reviewed (refereed) journal?
The database below offers one way to check if the journal is peer reviewed.  Please feel free to search it by entering the name of the journal.  Once you have found your journal title, please check to see if the record for the journal has a row with the "Refereed" label.  If the journal is peer reviewed, you will see both this label and a "Yes" to the right of that label.

Another way to verify if a journal is peer reviewed, or refereed, is to do a Web search for the home page of the journal and check for information on the journal's Web site that explains the review process for author submissions.

Internet Searching

Please read the information below to learn how you can construct a search of government Web sites in Google for information on your research topic.

Did You Know?
You can search for government Web sites in Google by typing: site:.gov [skipping a space and then entering your search term(s)]

To search education Web sites, please type:  site:.edu [skipping a space and then entering your search term(s)]

For a search of organization Web sites, please type:  site:.org [skipping a space and then entering your search term(s)]

Additional Tip
If needed, please try searches using different keywords, as well as placing your keywords in a different order. Also, if you are searching for a specific phrase, you may wish to place quotation marks around the phrase in order to find the phrase words together.

As always, please take the time to evaluate your sources.