It is important to know how to research and use the materials you find to support your theory. But in order to know how to access it and use it you first need to know where to look for information. Also, you must be objective in order to examine sources to see if they are relevant.It is important to be able to differentiate between scholarly, professional, and trade sources when doing research.
The first important difference between scholary, popular, and trade sources is who they are written by. Scholarly sources are written by scholarly authors. These are people who are experts in the field that they are writing about. They usually have one of more phds.Occasionally you will see scholarly scources written by phd canidates or people with master degrees. On the other hand popular degrees are written y non-experts. Journalists and freelance writers make up a large percentage of the authors of popluar sources. Ocasssionally you will see a popular publication about a certain topic written by an expert. But just because the author is a scholar doesn’t make the article scholarly. Trade magazines, also known as professional magazines or journals, are publications about skilled work that require special knowledge and skills but people don’t get advanced degrees in those fields. Articles and trade journals are written by people with extensive training, experience, and relevant certifications in theor fields regardless if they have college degrees.
The second important difference points out that it’s not only important who wrote the article but who it is written for. Scholarly articles and books are written for fellow experts in a specialized sunject area. They are also read by undergraduate and graduate students who are taking courses in that area. Because they are intended for fellow experts, scholarly articles use advanced specialized vocabularly without providing definitions. They don’t do anything to help a beginner get up to speed. The language of a scholarly article is formal and complex. No one talks out loud like that. Scholars have to be taught to write that way because when its done right its more precis and detailed than regular speech. The content covered in scholarly articles is advanced and it oftend fails to include explanations because the reader is expected to know those thigns already. Popular publications are intended for a general audience. They are usually publishe with the purpose of making a profit either by selling copies of books or getting people to look at advertisements. Becaue of that they are written and formatted to appeal to a large audience to grab peoples attention. Some popluar publications are intended for general interests. The languge is causal and easy to read and the topics are written with the expectation that the reader has little or no previous knowledge of the subjedt. The topics chosen for articles are often chosen based on current events and trends. Other popular sources are written for people with specific interests. These sources assume a highler level of knoeledge about topics covered within the sdource. They still provide definition of specialized vocabulary and explanations of complicated concepts. While they still tailor to readers who are not experts in the subject these s[eciality poluar magazines and book expect that if the reader was curious enough to oick up the magazinevor book they will be willing to put in a little effort into reading it and understanding ti, Trade magazine are intended for an audience of people who have the same job or are members of the same profession. Like scholarly sources they expect their readers to have a specialized vocabulary of their field and to share a body of ingroup knowleege that will allow them to understand advanced concepts in the articles without much explanation. Often their language is less formal than scholary language. The third way that scholoary, popular, and trade services differ is how they handle quality control. Every publication has to maintain its reputation and keep up with its audience expectations. Peer review is almost synonymous with scholarly and thast because peer review is at the heart odf scholarly communication. People don’t read and writein a vacuum. Its an ongoing conversation and peer is what maintains shared standards like research ethics, valid research methods for the discipline, statistical validity, weeding out errors, and detecting fraud amd misininfoirmation before it gets published. The way peer review works is when an author submits an articke to a jornal, the journal givesit a onceover, and if it seems like its relevant to the journal’s subject area they send it to a few experts. The experts don’t know who the author is and the author doesn’t know whi the experts are. This helps reduce bias. The peer reviewers examine the article for errors, invalid research methods, bias, or ethical violatgions. Popluar publications like magazines and newspapers have quality control too but its nothing like peer review. Instead they employ a bunch of proffreaders and staff checkers so that embarrassing mistakes don’t make itno print. While proffreaders and staff readers have have the abikity to fget rid of grammar errors they don’t have the knowledge to correct a flawed interpretation. Popular sources tend to lean more towards the bias side. Qaulity control in trade or professional publications vary significantly. Some of them are very much like editorally reviewed journals and others are like high quality popular magazines.