How To - Prepare an Annotated Bibliography: Determining Scholarly Journals

Identifying a Scholarly Journal

1. Scholarly journal articles often have an abstract, a descriptive summary of the article contents, before the main text of the article.
2. Scholarly journals always cite their sources in the form of footnotes or bibliographies. These bibliographies are generally lengthy and cite other scholarly writings.
3. Articles are written by a scholar in the field or by someone who has done research in the field. The affiliations of the authors are listed, usually at the bottom of the first page or at the end of the article--universities, research institutions, think tanks, and the like.
4. The language of scholarly journals is that of the discipline covered. It assumes some technical background on the part of the reader.
5. 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.
6. Many scholarly journals are published by a specific professional organization (ex.: Oxford University Press).