What is a Scholarly Source?

A majority of your sources must be scholarly and respectable. You need the wisdom and knowledge of experts to provide weight for your arguments. As a rule, materials written by experts and published in respected publications are considered scholarly. A good researcher learns who these experts and publications are throughout the research process. Section one of this chapter describes what a skilled researcher does. But how can you, as a student, discern what is a scholarly source?

To simplify the issue, journals that publish articles for fellow scholars are considered "scholarly" and all others are classified as "popular." There are numerous journals that fall into a gray area between these two categories, but this distinction is adequate for beginning researchers. This contains a table that illustrates the difference between scholarly and popular journals.

These pages were written by Glenn Remelts. and edited by Jeffrey L. Nyhoff and Nancy Zylstra
©2005 Calvin University (formerly Calvin College), All Rights Reserved

If you encounter technical errors, contact computing@calvin.edu.