Some Definitions:

• Abstract -- A brief overview of the content of an article which provides details about the article.  An abstract might be written by the author of the article, as is the case with most professional journals, or might be contributed by professional indexers, as is the case with many articles included in research databases.
• Article -- Much shorter than a book, an article can be as short as a paragraph or two or as long as several dozen pages. Articles can address any topic that the author decides to explore and can reflect opinion, news, research, reviews, instruction, nearly any focus. Articles appear in newspapers, magazines, trade publication, journals, and even in books. Because of their relative brevity, articles typically are used to provide up-to-date information on a wide variety of topics.
• Book Review -- A usually brief article that provides an evaluation and appreciation of a book. A review might assess the importance of a book's contributions to a particular field of study or might make recommendations to potential readers of the book. Reviews of fiction will usually comment on originality, style, and readability. While an important tool for helping a researcher assess the value of a book to his or her research topic, a book review, by itself, is usually not sufficient for use as a source in a research project.
• Issue -- A single, regular publication of a journal, magazine, newspaper, newsletter, or trade publication. A magazine or journal that publishes monthly will have twelve issues in a year. News magazines like Time and Newsweek publish weekly and will have 52 issues in a year. Newspapers might publish daily or weekly. A daily will have 365 issues in a year. Issues are usually numbered, so a journal that publishes twelve issues in a year starting with January will number each issue sequentially (issue 1, January; issue 2, February; issue 3, March; etc.).
• Journal -- A regularly published collection of articles that focus on topics specific to a particular academic discipline or profession. Journals might be published monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or even annually. Probably the most common publication frequency is monthly and quarterly. Journal articles are typically of substantial length (often more than 10 pages) and usually reflect research, whether it be surveys of existing research or discussions of original research. Most journal articles will be prefaced with an abstract and will include extensive documentation within the article or at the end of the article. Most research begins with a survey of existing literature on a topic and proceeds with the development of new ideas or new research into a topic. Articles are usually written by experts in their fields, although journals might also publish letters from their readership commenting on articles that have been published in previous issues. Journals might also include opinion articles or editorials. Examples of journals include Journal of the American Medical Association, American Sociological Review, Psychological Reports, Publications of the Modern Language Association, Educational Research Quarterly, and Evolutionary Biology.
• Literature Review -- An important part of nearly any research project, a literature review consists of a survey of previously published or nonpublished materials that focus on a particular subject under investigation. For example, a researcher looking into whether there is a relationship between musical aptitude and academic achievement in elementary age students would begin by looking for articles, books, and other materials that reflected previous research into this topic. The function of the review is to identify what is already known about the topic and to provide a knowledge foundation for the current study.
• Magazine -- A regularly published collection of articles that might focus on any topic in general or on topics of interest to a specific group, such as sports fans or music fans or home decorators. Magazines might be published weekly, monthly, semi-monthly or only several times a year. More commonly, magazines are published weekly or monthly. Articles in magazines are typically written for the general reading public and don't reflect in-depth research (an exception might be an investigative report written in a news magazine that involved weeks or months of research and interviews to complete). Most magazine articles do not list references and are written by the magazine's own staff writers. In general, magazine articles are easy to read, are fairly brief in length, and may include illustrations or photographs. Magazines also rely heavily on advertisements targeted to consumers as a source of revenue. Examples of magazines include Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Popular Mechanics, Car and Driver, Interview, Good Housekeeping, Elle, GQ, and Sports Illustrated.
• Newsletter -- A regularly published collection of brief news articles of interest to members of a particular community. Professional associations might issue newsletters to keep their membership up to date. Businesses and schools might issue newsletters to keep their constituents up to date. Nearly any type of organization or society might have its own newsletter. Articles in newsletters are typically very brief and the entire newsletter itself might be only a couple or half a dozen pages in length. These are usually internal publications that have interest mainly to people who participate in the activities of the issuing body. They are frequently used to inform members of an organization of upcoming events. Examples of newsletters include 401(k) Advisor, Adult Day Services Letter, Black History News & Notes, Credit Card Weekly, Education Business Weekly, Music Critics Association Newsletter, and Student Aid News.
• Newspaper -- A regularly published collection of fairly brief articles that provide updates on current events and interests. Newspapers are generally published daily, weekly, and bi-weekly, although they may have less regular publication schedules. Most major newspapers publish daily, with expanded coverage on the weekends. Newspapers can be national or international in focus or might be targeted strictly to a particular community or locality. Newspaper articles are written largely by newspaper staff and editors and often do not provide authors' names. Many of the articles appearing in national, international, and regional papers are written by various wire service writers and are nationally or internationally syndicated. Examples of wire services are Reuters and the Associated Press. Newspapers rely on advertising for a part of their income and might also include photographs and even full color illustrations of photos. A common feature of most newspapers is its editorial page, where the editors express opinions on timely topics and invite their readers to submit their opinions. Examples of newspapers include New York Times, Times of London, Florida Times-Union, Tampa Tribune, Denver Post, Guardian, and USA Today.
• Peer Reviewed/Refereed Journal -- Most academic/scholarly journals use subject experts or "peers" to review articles being considered for publication. Reviewers will carefully examine articles to ensure that they meet journal criteria for subject matter and style. The process ensures that articles are appropriate to a particular journal and that they are of the highest quality.
• Trade Journal -- A regularly published collection of articles that address topics of interest to members of a particular profession, such as law enforcement or advertising or banking. Articles tend to be brief and often report on developments and news within a field and might summarize current research being done in a particular area. Trade journals might also include editorials, letters to the editor, photo essays, and advertisements that target members of the profession. While trade journal articles might include references, the reference lists tend to be brief and don't reflect thorough reviews of the literature. Articles are usually written with the particular profession in mind, but are generally pretty accessible so that a person wishing to learn more about the profession would still be able to understand the articles. Examples of trade journals include Police Chief, Education Digest, Energy Weekly News, Aviation Week and Space Technology, Engineering News Record, Design News, and Traffic World.
• Volume -- Most journals and many magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and trade publications assign volume numbers to a year's worth or half a year's worth of issues. For example, a journal that publishes four times a year (quarterly) might assign each yearly collection of four issues a volume number to help identify which issues of the journal were published during a particular year. Publications that publish more frequently than monthly might also assign volume numbers, but they might change volume numbers mid year, so that there may be two volumes in any one publishing year.

Choosing What Is Best

Topic choice and focus are going to drive the selection of materials used to support a research project. Articles published in any of the above referenced publications could be useful in helping a researcher determine angles to follow in the development of a research topic, but, of all the types of publications listed above, journals are usually the best choices for use in developing college-level, academic research projects. The reasons are really rather simple:

• Academics and professional researchers tend to publish the results of their research in journals.
• Every academic discipline has its own core collection of journals that specialize in publishing current research in the discipline.
• Journal articles are at least in part based on previously published research, thus providing other researchers with a research trail that will help in tracking down related articles.
• Journal articles focus on specific aspects of a topic rather than on generalities and direct their readers' attention to controversies or new discoveries within a discipline.
• Journal articles help keep intellectual discussion alive and lively. Researchers may not always agree with each other and the discipline benefits from the careful examination of specific topics within the discipline.

This is not to discount the value of other types of articles by any means. For example, a researcher examining ideological changes in editorials published in the New York Times and Times of London newspapers over the past 50 years would obviously base a part of the research on the editorials from those two newspapers. The same researcher would also likely examine political science and sociology journals to try to discover if other researchers had previously noted shifts in ideology in national newspapers and to help determine what social or political trends might be driving those changes.

A researcher examining the use of sex to advertise American automobiles in consumer magazines over the past two decades would necessarily have to examine advertisements in selected consumer magazines over the past two decades in order to establish a research base for his or her assumptions. For this project, the researcher might look at Newsweek and Time and Car and Driver and Rolling Stone, to name a few magazines, to get representative examples of car ads over the years. But to understand the psychological dynamic at play behind using sex as an advertising ploy, the same researcher would rely heavily on psychology journals that would publish previous research into this and similar topics.

As a researcher begins delving into a topic, he or she should first carefully consider the types of information that will be necessary for covering the topic and then determine which types of publications are most likely to contain that information. As the previous two examples illustrate, even though journal articles offer the best information for academic research projects, some topics will by necessity require the use of other, more popular publications as sources of data that feed into the research. The key thing for an academic researcher to remember is that the in-depth analyses, the detailed examinations, the exhaustive studies of specific aspects within a discipline are most likely to be published as articles in journals, so, regardless of the particular topic, journal articles will play a role in a successful research project.

Recognizing Different Types of Articles

The examples below provide general characteristics for each of the types of publications referenced in this reading. For any of the following examples, there will be exceptions. For example, while advertisements are usually included in magazine, trade journal, and newspaper articles, and not in journals, some journals might include advertisements. A prime example is JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, which includes research articles but also includes advertisements that are more typical of trade journals.

Just remember that for every rule there is an exception.

     Journal Article Characteristics

• Authors:  Authors of journal articles are usually affiliated with universities, research institutions, or professional associations. Author degrees are usually specified with the author names as are the affiliations.
• Abstract:  The article text is usually preceded with an abstract. The abstract will provide an overview of what the article discusses or reveals and frequently is useful in identifying articles that report the results of scientific studies.
• Use of Professional Terminology and Language:  The language used in journal articles is specific to the subject matter being covered by the journal. For example, an article written for a psychological journal is written in an academic rather than popular style and will make heavy use of psychological terms.
• In Text References:  Journal articles normally will be profusely documented with sources that have provided information to the article authors and/or that provide further related information. Documentation of sources can be handled by in-text parenthetical references (MLA, APA, Chicago sciences styles), by the use of footnotes (Chicago humanities style), or by the use of endnotes (Turabian style). Individual journals will specify their own requirements for documentation.
• Bibliography:  Because journal articles use numerous sources as documentation, these sources are often referenced in an alphabetically or numerically arranged bibliography located at the end of the article. Format of the bibliography will vary depending on the documentation style used in the article.
• Charts, Graphs, Tables, Statistical Data:  Articles that result from research studies will often include statistical data gathered during the course of the studies. These data are often presented in charts and tables.
• Length of Article:  Journal articles, in general, tend to be fairly lengthy, often consisting of a dozen or more pages. Some journals also publish book reviews. These are typically brief and should not be confused with the full-length research articles that the journal focuses on.
• Use of volume and issue numbering:  Journals normally make use of volume and issue numbering to help identify individual issues in their series. Normally a volume will encompass an entire year's worth of a journal's issues. For example, a journal that is published four times yearly (quarterly) will have four issues in its yearly volume. Issues may be identified solely with numbers or with both numbers and date designations. For example, a quarterly journal will typically number its issues 1 through 4, but it might also assign season designations to the individual numbers, such as Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. A monthly journal will have twelve issues in a yearly volume and might use the month names along with the issue numbers (issue 1, January; issue 2, February; and so on). Some magazines, trade publications, and newspapers might also make use of volume and issue numbering, so this isn't always the best indicator.
• Subject Focus:  Journals typically gather and publish research that focuses on a very specific field of inquiry, like criminology, or southern history, or statistics.
• Overall Appearance: Journals are typically heavy on text and light on illustration. Journal covers tend toward the plain with an emphasis on highlighting key research articles that appear within a particular issue.

Updated 1/09.