Scholarly Sources
Scholarly sources are a record of the conversation happening in a field. Reading scholarly sources shows you what researchers in that field are thinking about and how they are approaching topics.
Scholarly articles share certain traits:
- They are written by and for experts in their particular fields
- They assume that readers will be students, other experts, or researchers in their fields
- They assume knowledge of their fields that may be beyond people who are not students or experts
- They are published in scholarly journals
Scholarly Journals
Scholarly journals publish scholarly articles in their fields. In order to be considered scholarly, an article needs to go through the peer-review process.
During peer-review, articles submitted to a journal are read by other scholars in their field. These scholars weigh in with comments and notes about whether or not an article should be published and whether or not there should be changes made to it.
When you read an article in a peer-reviewed journal, it has been evaluated by other experts in its field and determined to push forward the scholarly conversation.
Finding Scholarly Journals
You can find scholarly journals in library databases and in some cases, on the web. Some journals are Open Access which means that anyone can read them, but many of them are very expensive. The library subscribes to many journals so you can have access.
