SURI

Here is a list of different types of scholarly articles.

• original research (empirical) article
  • based on an experiment or study. This type of article will have a methodology section that tells how the experiment was set up and conducted, a results or discussion section, and usually a conclusion section. In psychology courses, you are often asked to find empirical articles. Empirical articles are original research articles.
  • Example: Bicultural competence, acculturative family distancing, and future depression in Latino/a college students: A moderated mediation model
• review article (literature review or systematic review)
  • written to bring together and summarize the results/conclusions from multiple original research articles/studies. This types of article will not usually have a methodology section, and they generally have very extensive bibliographies.
  • Example: A literature review of studies of depression and treatment outcomes among U.S. college students since 1990
• theoretical article
  • written to contribute to the theoretical foundations of a field of study. In this type of article, an author will draw upon existing research to form a new theory or explore theories in new ways.

Other content you may find in scholarly journals:

• book review
  • while written by scholars, book reviews in scholarly journals are meant to provide a summary of a newly published book. Book reviews can lead to the discovery of new sources to investigate.
• editorial
  • while written by editors of scholarly journals, these articles are summaries of content included in a specific issue of a journal. Editorials can lead to the discovery of new sources to investigate.