What is a Scholarly Journal?

J. American History

Scholarly journals, which are sometimes referred to as "Peer Reviewed", always cite their sources in the form of footnotes or bibliographies.They generally have a sober, serious look and may contain many graphs and charts but few glossy pages or exciting pictures.

Articles are written by a scholar (e.g., Ph.D. or M.D.) in the field or by someone who has done research in the field. The language of scholarly journals is that of the discipline covered. It assumes some scholarly background on the part of the reader. The main purpose of a scholarly journal is to report on original research or experimentation in order to make such information available to the rest of the scholarly world.

Examples of scholarly journals:

  • American Economic Review
  • Archives of Sexual Behavior
  • Journal of American History
  • JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association
  • Journal of Marriage and the Family
  • Modern Fiction Studies
  • Sex Roles: A Journal of Research

For more information and examples, check out the Scholarly vs. Popular LibGuide! If you already have the citation for a scholarly article, please use our citation linker to locate the text of the article.

Quick Tip: Many research databases have a checkbox on the search page to limit your search to scholarly/peer-reviewed articles.