Research Guides: Writing 101: Trauma Literature: Distinguishing Source Types

Distinguishing Between Source Types

Scholarly Sources vs. Popular Sources

There are many differences between a scholarly source and a popular source.

Indicators	Scholarly Sources (Books and Articles)	Book Reviews	Interviews
Publisher/Publication Process	Publisher is often associated with a University or a College. The source will have gone through some sort of editorial process before publication. For journal articles, the source will have gone through a peer-review process.	Could be an academic journal, although book reviews are generally not peer reviewed. May also be published in sources meant for a general audience (e.g. NYT Review of Books)	Publisher tend to be for-profit commercial organizations. Some popular sources might go through an editorial process (i.e. newspaper and magazine articles), but others might be self-edited (blog post).
Authors	Experts in a subject, typically professors and researchers.	May be scholars or authors hired by a publisher, depending on where the book review was published	Writers employed by the publisher of the source or by free-lance authors.
Audience	Scholars at all levels--other experts, researchers, and students. The way the content is written will assume some sort of familiarity with a topic and its technical terminology.	Scholars or a general audience, depending on where the book review was published	Written for a general audience. Content is presented in a way that most audience members will understand without much prior knowledge.
Bibliography	Will always cite many other sources and have footnotes or a bibliography. Most of these cited sources will also be scholarly sources.	Typically does not includes a bibliography.	Typically does not includes a bibliography.

The Peer-Review Process

Peer-Review is a way that scholarly journal articles get evaluated and vetted before publication.

After an article is written, it gets sent to a publisher. The publisher then sends the article out to experts in a relevant subject area, who then assess whether the article is up to academic standards (i.e. contains sound arguments, treats its sources fairly, and is overall well written).

If the reviewers reject the article, it will then be returned to the author to revise. Once the article is approved by the reviewers, it is published.