Offers insights on distinguishing between scholarly and popular sources, including evaluation techniques for each type and their effective use in research, to enhance the quality and credibility of your work.
Transcript
Hello! This video takes a look at scholarly and popular sources, what they are, and how you can evaluate their use for your research.
Scholarly and popular sources both collect, review, and disseminate information.
They have different purposes, audiences, and uses, and can be used together to see the broader conversation surrounding a topic.
One is not necessarily better or worse than the other.
Which types of sources you will use depends on your research need.
Often you'll use both scholarly and popular sources at different points in the research process.
Before we discuss their uses further, let’s talk a little bit about what scholarly and popular sources are.
The main characteristic that distinguishes scholarly sources from popular sources is that scholarly sources go through a process called peer review.
Peer review involves a robust review process where experts provide feedback on a manuscript before it can be published.
This process helps to ensure the quality and significance of published research.
Scholarly sources may also be called "academic," "peer-reviewed," or "research sources."
Scholarly sources include academic journals and articles, as well as scholarly books, which are published by a university press, a professional association, or an independent scholarly publisher.
Popular sources are pretty much everything else.
They include social media posts, newspaper articles, government documents, books, websites, magazines, and more.
Popular sources usually have no formal review process.
Instead, content is selected by editors or creators.
Let’s look at some of the characteristics of scholarly and popular sources in more detail to better understand when you may use one over the other.
Scholarly and popular sources serve different purposes and have different authors.
Scholarly sources written by experts in their field are meant to share research findings with the larger academic community.
Popular sources, on the other hand, are meant to provide information in a general manner to the public.
They are written by a wide range of authors, including journalists, students, professionals, scholars, and influencers.
Considering their different purposes, scholarly and popular sources also have different audiences and use different language.
Scholarly sources are written for other scholars, such as academic faculty, professionals, researchers, and students, who are often already familiar with the topic.
Since a certain level of experience with the topic is expected, they use academic language that includes jargon or specialized subject-specific vocabulary.
Popular sources are usually written for the general public, or those who work in a particular industry, and as such tend to use simple, everyday language or layman’s terms.
The appearance or organization of scholarly and popular sources is one way to easily distinguish between the two.
Scholarly articles, especially, may follow a predictable structure, which starts with an abstract and concludes with references.
Since popular sources vary significantly in format, they may take on a variety of appearances.
However, they are often slick and attractive, may use narrative to tell a story, and include pictures and/or advertisements.
While there is some overlap, scholarly sources are most often found in academic and research libraries, in other medical, scientific, or research settings, and through online databases or publishers' websites.
Access may be limited behind a paywall outside of the library, so make sure you always go through the UNLV University Libraries to access full-text sources.
As for popular sources, from your favorite Google search to the magazines at the grocery store, they are found everywhere.
Check out the UNLV Libraries and your local public library for access to subscription-based publications, including trade journals, newspapers, and popular magazines.
Another significant difference between scholarly and popular sources is references.
Scholarly sources should always cite their sources, both in text and at the end of the work.
Sources are cited for any direct quotations and the use of other people's ideas.
The references can be verified by finding the source materials.
While some popular sources will include references, most will not.
If citations are provided, perhaps as a link to another website or article, they may be difficult to verify or track down.
Evaluating source types takes practice and a lot of exploring.
What sources you ultimately decide to use in your research will depend on your information need, assignment requirements, and the context of your research.
For example, Wikipedia is great for getting background information on a city you will be visiting, but you will likely need to search for books or articles if you are writing a research paper about that same city.
Maybe you are writing about the popular opinion of a particular city.
In this case, newspaper articles and even tweets may be helpful to provide additional context in your research.
Popular sources are extremely varied and serve many different purposes.
Because they are so varied, you should consider each source carefully to determine its credibility and relevance to your topic.
Scholarly sources, which have undergone the peer review process, give credibility and authority to your research.
They are used to engage in the scholarly conversation around your topic and support your research argument.
Citing all sources, both scholarly and popular, is important to give credit to the various voices in the conversation around your topic.
It also allows others to dive deeper and learn more about your talk.
If you have any questions or want to learn more, contact the UNLV University Libraries at WWW [dot] library [dot] UNLV [dot] edu.
We're here to help.
