Below is a listing of general characteristics which can be used to identify differences between popular magazines and scholarly journals. Some magazines and journals, however, may not meet all the criteria in any one category. Some publications may mix 'magazine' content with more scholarly 'journal articles,' so judge by the individual article as well as the entire publication. Besides, with the availability of full-text articles from databases, it may be difficult to judge characteristics of the publication as a whole.
| Popular Magazines | Scholarly Journals* | |
| Appearance | Attractive appearance, Eye-catching cover Pictures and illustrations in color Glossy paper |
Plain cover |
| Audience |
Non-professionals, General audience |
Professors, scholars, researchers, or students Written in the technical language of the field |
| Content | Personalities, news, and general interest articles A wide variety of subjects Articles written by staff, May be unsigned |
Report original research, discoveries, or experimentation Publish research projects, their methodology, and significance Articles written by contributing authors, with institution indicated |
| Advertisements | Heavy | Few or none |
| Reviewers | Reviewed by editors | Reviewed by editors, peers, and referees |
| Documentation | Few or no bibliographic references | Bibliographic references (footnotes, end notes, etc.) |
| Examples |
National Geographic |
Biology of the Cell Social Forces School Science Review Journal of Health Care Management |
*sometimes also referred to as 'academic,' 'refereed,' or 'peer-reviewed' articles
Many of the Research Databases that the library subscribes to are available through UTMOST, which allows you to discover journals, books, and a variety of other resources available to you. You'll automatically be searching across a wide variety of subject disciplines, but you can click on Search Options or Advanced search to choose individual disciplines of interest.
Click on Advanced Search to see all of your search options on a single page. Below the search boxes at the top, you'll see other options for refining your search. You can limit your results to only scholarly, peer-reviewed journals, for example (green arrow), or set date limits on the search (blue arrow).
To search for your topic effectively, divide the whole research question up into subtopics. If you are researching Socrates' view of death or suicide as presented in the Crito or the Apology, you may want to divide up your topic into three parts and put one per row in your search boxes, as shown below. Other tips:
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The results will be displayed in order of relevance, as determined by UTMOST, but you can also sort the list by date descending (newest first), author, title, source, etc. (green arrow). The options on the left panels can help you in narrowing a very large search down. Of particular note is the date slider at the right, which can quickly limit your results to any date range (blue arrow), and the options to limit your search to Academic Journals. To locate a copy of an article, either look for an icon idicating PDF Full Text or HTML Full Text directly beneath the citation, or click on the Find It! button to look for additional electronic or print copies (red arrow).
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Citations (and Full Text, if PDF or HTML full text is included in EBSCO) can be saved, e-mailed, or printed either by adding the items to your folder and clicking on the Folder icon at the top or right side of the page... or by click on an individual title and using the print, save, and e-mail icons found there.
Google Scholar covers articles, theses, books, abstracts, court opinions and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research, and may include pre-prints and web-published reports as well as published literature. Since Google Scholar indexes information from multiple sources (provided by publishers, included in databases such as PubMed, found on the public web, etc.), there is no comprehensive list of what publications it covers. However, for many fields, the greater number of publication formats included means that Google Scholar may find citations that were not discovered in Web of Science.
You can find Google Scholar by going directly to http://scholar.google.com, or selecting Scholar from the 'More...' menu at the top of a Google search screen.
Searching Google Scholar uses the same search rules you may be familiar with from Google:
Additional options specific to Google Scholar are available under Advanced Search.
Results are presented with the most cited items first. Results from books, scholarly journals, and web pages are all interfiled in the list. You can use the drop down menu at the top to restrict your results to just recent years (blue arrow). Google Scholar may identify scholarly articles that are not freely available to the public. If there is a free copy available, there will be a separate link to the free version off to the right of the entry (green arrow). However, we may have access to other electronic or print versions of the book or article through OhioLINK or our own library. Click on the Find it UToledo links to search for other access (yellow boxes). [If you are on campus, these appear automatically. If you are searching Google Scholar from off campus, use the Scholar Preferences link near the search box to set your library; just search for Toledo and check the box that says Find It @ UToledo.]
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