What Is a Scholarly Journal?

Scholarly journals, like magazines, are published periodically, ranging in frequency from monthly to quarterly or even only twice yearly. The key differences between magazines and journals are that journals are written for and by experts in their chosen field and that they focus on a particular research interest, such as experimental psychology or aerodynamics. Scholarly journals are published in every academic discipline and are used as a means for scholars and researchers to share their research and discoveries with others who are also experts in their discipline. In the course of publishing their own research, academics will review the work of other experts and will also raise challenging questions about areas of their disciplines that can be pursued in future research. In short, scholarly journals provide a sounding board for those involved in deeply exploring any academic discipline.

By nature, scholarly journals are written in a style different from popular magazines. Since they are addressed to a specialized audience, articles published in scholarly journals are infused with the language of the discipline on which they focus. Articles written for experts in psychology, for example, will utilize the specialized vocabulary used by psychologists in their study of human behavior. This makes them largely inaccessible to the lay reader, but, then, these articles are not written for the lay reader in the first place, but for experts in the field. Important studies published in scholarly journals will be reported in the popular press in magazines such as Time and Newsweek, but the reports of the studies in the popular press greatly simplify the findings so that the general ideas are easily accessible to any reader. Not so, the scholarly journals. Here the results of the studies are published in great detail using the specialized language available to experts in the field. Data collected and analyzed as part of the study will also be included in the published results.

When Should I Use Scholarly Journals?

Academic research projects are best completed using research articles. Research articles are published in scholarly journals rather than in the popular press. The point of doing an academic research project  is to gain a better understanding of the current state of research in a particular area and to put forth new ideas that will further enhance understanding of the subject. Research feeds on other research.

A researcher will typically review the available literature on a topic of interest prior to launching into a further investigation or into a new investigation. This process of examining existing literature in an area of interest is know as a literature review. The process of reviewing the literature helps the researcher understand what else needs to be discovered about the chosen topic and uncovers gaps in knowledge about the topic that the current research can then attempt to fill in. In some cases, a writer may do just the literature review to inform other experts in the field of the current state of knowledge. In most cases, however, the literature review is the launching pad from which a researcher proceeds into an original study of other issues or aspects of the topic.

Masters projects and Dissertations always begin with literature reviews. These advanced degree projects rely heavily on scholarly publications for material and are written with the idea of furthering the discussion within an academic discipline. Scholarly journals should also be the first choice of any college researcher working on completing an academic research project, regardles of the length of the project.