As mentioned in the next box, scholarly journal articles are written by and for scholars and researchers. If you are not a scholar or researcher, this can make reading them challenging because they use high-level jargon, vocabulary, methodologies, models, theories, and statistical analysis. The authors don't often explain them - there is an assumption that the scholars and researchers reading them already know what they mean. However, with guidance and practice we can learn to read and understand them.
This video is a good start!
Information is written for a variety or purposes, and for a variety of audiences.
Scholarly or peer-reviewed (or academic) articles are articles (or books) that are written by researchers or scholars for other researchers or scholars. While students and the general public can certainly read them, and do, they are not the intended audience.
Scholarly articles are a method of communication within a scholarly or academic field or discipline. This is a communication over space and time - through scholarly articles we can trace what work has been done on a specific topic or line of research, by whom, and how our knowledge and ideas have changed over time on a topic, question, or a line of research.
Scholarly articles are typically contained within scholarly journals - these are periodical publications that come out monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Before articles are accepted for publication by these journals, the articles go through a peer-review process. The peer-reviewers are themselves researchers or scholars in the field or discipline of the journal. A journal's peer-reviewers evaluate an article based on things like sound methodology and the article's unique contribution to that line of research. Once the journal's peer-review group evaluates an article offered for publication, they may accept the article for publication in the journal, or they may reject the article for publication, or they may accept the article but request some changes before accepting it for publication. This peer-review process offers some quality control for the journal, ensuring that high-quality articles are accepted for publication. Note: Not every article within a journal is peer-reviewed. That's important to understand. For example, many scholarly journals include opinion pages and book reviews - those articles are not peer-reviewed, and though we might think of them as scholarly they are not the type of article to use for this project.
Journals are often ranked by metrics such as their "Impact Factor" - how much reach and influence a journal has within its field or discipline area. Journals with high-impact factors can be pretty prestigious to be published in. An example of a journal with a well-known high-impact factor is The New England Journal of Medicine. One thing to note is that, like any institutionalized process, peer-review and publishing can be fraught with bias and politics and can marginalize researchers and topics. Scholarly journals are not a perfect system of communication but they are a very long-standing one, and are still highly valued and useful as a method of communication between and amongst scholars and researchers, and for any one who needs to know what the current research in their field, like you!
Video: How Do I Know if Articles Are Scholarly or Peer-Reviewed? (Library Research Skills Tutorial)
Video: "How Do I Know if Articles Are Scholarly or Peer-Reviewed? (Library Research Skills Tutorial)" by Concordia University Libraries. Licensed under CC BY.
Here's another thing to be aware of! As mentioned above, not every article in a scholarly journal is peer-reviewed. Typically only the "research" articles are peer-reviewed. However, some scholarly journals do not have a peer-review process, so while the articles they publish may be scholarly, they might not necessarily be peer-reviewed. It's safe to say that all peer-reviewed articles are scholarly, but not every scholarly article has been peer-reviewed prior to publication.
Video: "Identifying a Peer-Reviewed Article" by USC Libraries. Standard YouTube license applies.
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