Magazines and journals take distinct forms based on their purpose and audience. In the case of scholarly journals and technical/trade journals, they have the same audience -- a particular profession or group of people working in the same discipline. Scholarly journals and technical/trade journals are also alike in that the articles within both are typically written by professionals in the discipline. However, these two types of journals differ in terms of purpose.
Most reading is now done online, and often the articles are found separately --not in the context of the journal or magazine in which the article was published.
If you would like a more detailed explanation, read on...
Scholarly peer review is a process to assure the quality of articles in a particular discipline or field of study. Work, activities, decision-making, and problem-solving need to be based on high quality evidence.
In scholarly peer-review, articles are evaluated by other scholars/specialists who are experts in the specialty/topic of the article.
Journals that use a peer-review process to select which articles they publish are called "peer-reviewed journals" or "refereed journals."
Using peer-reviewed scholarly journals helps you base your work and decisions on credible evidence.
How can I find out if an article is peer-reviewed?
FIRST. Determine if the article is scholarly. Only scholarly articles are likely to be peer-reviewed, so you can automatically eliminate non-scholarly articles from consideration.
SECOND. Although most articles that publish original research and that are found using professional research databases are likely to be peer-reviewed, here are two ways to determine if a journal is peer-reviewed:
EndNote Click is a free browser plug-in and web platform that enables one-click access to academic journal articles, across library subscriptions, publisher websites, OA repositories, databases, and search engines.
EndNote Click travels with you as you search and discover journal articles on the web; EndNote Clickworks by bringing the institution's subscriptions to the point of need for the researcher, and across many different platforms, on- and off-campus. If no subscription access is available for an article, EndNote Clickwill try to deliver a free alternative, e.g. an OA version or preprint.
To add EndNote Click to your browser simply go to https://kopernio.com/ to download the browser extension.
A video providing an overview of the service can be watched at https://youtu.be/l7iDdaKJJmM
Citation managers provide you with a method to organize, store, and share your citations and articles for research. These citation managers also integrate with word processing programs to create in-text citations and reference lists. EndNote has a desktop version (available from the library) and an online version (available for free). Zotero is freely available.