Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Articles

Watch the Video

In addition to differences between scholarly journal articles between disciplines, there are also different types of scholarly journal articles. The following video reviews the differences between empirical, review, and theoretical articles, which are all scholarly articles. The video also covers content such as book reviews and editorials that are found in journals but that are not scholarly, meaning that they are not empirical/original, review, or theoretical studies.

"Types of Scholarly Articles" (3:35) is by VCU Libraries

Overview

• These are articles in which the authors are reporting results of an experiment, survey, historical or literary analysis they conducted, etc.

Examples

• "Artificial intelligence in Peer Review: How Can Evolutionary Computation Support Journal Editors?" in the journal PLOS One (open access)
• "(En)gendering Artificial Intelligence in Cyberspace" in The Yearbook of English Studies journal (log in with your MCCD credentials to access)

Overview

• While there are various types of literature review articles, in these articles, authors are evaluating the body of scholarly literature around a topic, noting new or future directions. 
  • This is an extended version of what you might see in the background/introduction section of an original/empirical article. 
• Review articles typically have the word review somewhere in the title or abstract of the article, but the headings from these articles may read more like topics and subtopics, though certain types of reviews may also provide a methods section noting how the studies were selected for review, etc. 

Examples

• "A Review of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education from 2010 to 2020" in the journal Complexity (open access)
• "Artificial Intelligence Literacy in Higher and Adult Education: A Scoping Literature Review" in the journal Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence (open access)

Watch the Video

The video below highlights different types of literature reviews, including traditional / narrative reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and meta-syntheses.

"Understanding Literature Reviews" (2:45) is by SeattleU Library

Overview 

• In these articles, authors present abstract principles, models, or frameworks related to a specific field of knowledge. While scholarly and often peer-reviewed, these articles do not include methods and results sections. They will typically include the terms concepts / conceptual, framework / model, theoretical foundation, perspectives, etc. in their title or abstract. 

Examples

• "The CLEAR Path: A Framework for Enhancing Information Literacy Through Prompt Engineering" in The Journal of Academic Librarianship
• "A Theoretical Framework for Interrogating the Integration of Artificial Intelligence in Education" in the journal Research on Education and Media (open access)