1. Field Guide to Periodical Types
How to tell if an article is from an Academic/Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Periodical

2. What is a periodical?
In the world of research and libraries, a periodical is any information item that comes out on a regular basis.

3. How often are periodicals published?
Newspapers are usually published daily.
Magazines are usually published weekly or every two weeks or monthly.
Journals are usually published monthly or every two months or sometimes once or twice a year.

4. What types of periodicals are typically involved in research?
Newspapers for practical event-driven information
General magazines for practical information like profiles, reflection of events over time.
Trade journals or trade magazines for specialized industries or practices or processes or interests.
Academic/Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Journals for studies usually done with some kind of science or social science based methodology.

5. Basic Periodical Characteristics By Type

6. Newspapers Usually regional Covers many subject areas Published daily
Pictures & illustrations
Short articles

7. General Interest Magazines
Long & short articles
Published weekly, monthly, bi-monthly
Pictures & illustrations
Covers many subject areas

8. Trade Magazines Covers one subject area Long & short articles
Targeted at a specialized audience
Pictures & illustrations
Published weekly, monthly, bi-monthly

9. Academic/Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Journals
Long articles
Targeted at a specialized audience
Published monthly, bi-monthly,
bi-annually,
annually
Mainly text with some charts, tables, graphs
Covers one subject area

10. How to Identify an Academic/Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Article
Look at the article’s characteristics

11. Identifying The Scholarly Journal
Sometimes referred to as:
The Academic Journal or
The Peer-Reviewed Journal
A typical academic, scholarly and peer-reviewed article will look similar to this. Notice right away a lack of color and pictures.

12. The journal title sometimes, but not always, contains the word journal and is usually rather straightforward.
The journal title will be important for the citation created for this article.
A typical academic, scholarly and peer-reviewed article will look similar to this. Notice right away a lack of color and pictures.

13. Further identifying information will usually be shown on the cover or right at the article such as:
Vol. or Volume
No. or Number
Month and Year
All of this will be important for the citation created for this article.
A typical academic, scholarly and peer-reviewed article will look similar to this. Notice right away a lack of color and pictures.

14. Very important for the citation created for this article.
The article title will usually be rather long, will be very descriptive of the content, and many times includes a colon signaling a subtitle.
Very important for the citation created for this article.
A typical academic, scholarly and peer-reviewed article will look similar to this. Notice right away a lack of color and pictures.

15. The authors are usually listed with their school or organization affiliation.
Author names are important for the citation created for this article, but the affiliations are left out of most citation styles.
A typical academic, scholarly and peer-reviewed article will look similar to this. Notice right away a lack of color and pictures.

16. DOI stands for digital object identifier.
The DOI.
DOI stands for digital object identifier.
This number is like the DNA of the article. Each article has a unique DOI. It can be used to search for the article on the Internet. The search will usually point you to the publisher.
The idea behind the DOI is that a reader in the present may not have access to the same article databases as the writer or someday in the future an article database may no longer exist.
A reader in the future could locate the article directly from the publisher as long as they have the DOI.
A typical academic, scholarly and peer-reviewed article will look similar to this. Notice right away a lack of color and pictures.
APA requires a DOI but MLA does not.

17. Most academic articles have an abstract which summarizes the study and the findings.
A typical academic, scholarly and peer-reviewed article will look similar to this. Notice right away a lack of color and pictures.

18. Academic articles usually have keywords categorizing the article by subject.
A typical academic, scholarly and peer-reviewed article will look similar to this. Notice right away a lack of color and pictures.

19. Academic articles have an introduction
A typical academic, scholarly and peer-reviewed article will look similar to this. Notice right away a lack of color and pictures.

20. Academic articles usually review the research and articles published in the past on the same or related topics.
In this example the section is called Prior Studies. Sometimes this is called the Literature Review.

21. Some academic articles will state the hypothesis of the study using the designation H followed by the number as shown here.

22. The methodology of the study will be stated
The methodology of the study will be stated. This will describe in-depth how they did their study, survey or experiment.

23. Academic articles end with a conclusion restating the main points and findings of the article.

24. Academic articles have a References or Works Cited list providing citations to the articles and items used in the writing of this article.

25. Most databases will have a PDF of academic/scholarly/peer-reviewed articles. If only the text is available you will still be able to identify the presence of these characteristics.
A typical academic, scholarly and peer-reviewed article will look similar to this. Notice right away a lack of color and pictures.