General Criteria
The following is a list of General Criteria that can be used to distinguish between popular magazines, trade magazines, and scholarly journals. Some journals do not meet all the criteria in one category. For example, Scientific American, which has glossy pages and color pictures, contains both scholarly articles as well as those geared to a more general audience. Accountability and content of the specific article are the key criteria used to determine if an article is scholarly.
| CRITERIA | POPULAR MAGAZINES | TRADE MAGAZINES | SCHOLARLY JOURNALS |
| Appearance |
eye-catching cover
glossy paper pictures and illustrations in color each issue starts with page 1 |
cover depicts industrial setting
glossy paper
pictures and illustrations in color
each issue starts with page 1
|
plain cover
plain paper black/white graphics and illustrations pages consecutive throughout each volume |
| Audience To identify (over 150,000 titles) see PubList.com |
nonprofessionals
|
members of a specific business, industry or organization
|
researchers and professionals
|
|
Content
|
personalities, news, and general interest articles
articles written by staff, may be unsigned |
industry trends, new products or techniques, and organizational news
articles written by staff or contributing authors |
research projects, methodology, and theory
articles written by contributing authors |
| Accountability |
editorial review no bibliographies |
editorial review
may have short bibliographies |
peer review/refereed has bibliographies |
| Advertisements |
heavy
|
moderate
all or most are trade related |
few or none
|
| Examples |
Gourmet New York Psychology Today |
Chilton's Food Engineering Public Management APA Monitor |
Journal of Food Science Urban Studies
Journal of Applied Psychology
|
