Three Types of Journal Articles
1. Newspaper and Magazine Articles
- Contain news and subject-related articles
- Can be used as primary sources if they describe an event or have an interview with a witness to a historic event (see below for more)
- Usually not academic or professional-level articles
- Are only as good as the journalist/author (watch out for inaccuracies)
2. Non-refereed academic journal articles
- Length, audience, and format varies: they can be short to long; novice to expert level
- Can be research-focused and written by experts for varying audiences; some are not (quality varies)
- Hasn’t gone through vetting process
- IMPORTANT: can appear in peer-reviewed journals, too!
- Examples: letters to the editor; book reviews, etc.
3. Refereed academic journal articles (aka: PEER-REVIEWED articles)
- Known as Primary Literature (!NOT primary sources, though!)
- Always research-focused and written by experts
- Goes through a (usually double-blind) vetting process
- Contain original research data
- Audience is usually academic or professional (written by experts; for experts)
- The pre-publication vetting process uses
- Peer judgement
- Methodology and scope assessment
- Scrutiny to conclusions based on the current research
- Often a double-blind process (reviewer and author do not know who is reviewing the work) that removes at least some bias from the process.
The goal: judge the work on merits; not on name/s attached to the project.
- More about how the peer-review process works in science research from the UC Museum of Paleontology at the University of California-Berkeley.
