5B. Types of Periodicals
"Periodical" refers to journals, magazines, newspapers and newsletters, because these publications are published on a regular or periodic basis, such as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.
For research papers, peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles should be included whenever possible because articles in journals are highly authoritative. "Peer-reviewed" means the articles have been screened and accepted by experts in the field for publication in a journal. Journals abide by the highest standards of scholarship for inclusion of articles in their pages. Journal articles are written by researchers and experts in a field, with thorough documentation of information and citation of sources.
Popular/general interest magazine and newspaper articles are intended for general, wider auciences, are usually shorter treatments of a topic and may be easier to understand than journal articles. Some magazine and newspaper articles may be good introductory sources of information, providing broad overviews. Magazine and newspaper articles may have less rigorous documentation of sources, less than thorough citations (often no citations at all), and are usually written by journalists, free-lance writers and staff writers.
For more on the differences between journals and popular magazines, click here.
To return to the tutorial menu, please click here.
