While these three types of publications include articles and are published periodically, their differences are significant. You'll need to understand these differences because:

• articles from scholarly journals are not cited exactly like those from magazines or trade journals.
• you may be required to use articles from only one of these publication types for your research.

Consult the table below to learn about the characteristics of popular magazines, trade journals, and scholarly journals. The magazines and journals to which the Library subscribes are located on the 3rd floor. Try comparing some to the characteristics shown here.

If you are viewing an article in a full-text article database, you won't have the visual clues apparent when looking at the publication itself. The most obvious difference is that sources used by the authors of scholarly journal articles for their research are cited. You'll rarely find sources cited in magazine or trade journal articles.