ENG 122: Academic Writing II: Defining scholarly vs peer-reviewed literature

Remember: Peer review is a process that some scholarly articles undergo. Not all scholarly articles are peer reviewed. All peer-reviewed articles are part of the scholarly literature.

Scholarly articles are articles written by and for academics and experts in a specific discipline or area of academic study.

Peer reviewed articles have been reviewed prior to publication by other experts in the subject area of the article.

Very often the terms "scholarly" and "peer reviewed" are used interchangeably.

Use the clues in the box titled "How to spot a scholarly article" in the right-hand column to determine if an article meets your criteria.

Clue #1: Length of the article. Scholarly articles are generally longer than two pages.

Clue #2: Length and language level of the words in the title and the article. Scholarly articles use specialized vocabulary, typically containing longer words and more complex sentences. As well, they may include statistical or numeric data, charts, tables or graphs.

Clue #3: Includes an abstract. Scholarly articles often include an abstract.

Clue #4: Includes a list of works cited. Scholarly articles always cite their sources and typically have a reference list of some sort, named "References," "Works Cited," or "Bibliography."

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