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It's important to understand the difference between a popular, scholarly and trade periodical.

What's a Periodical?

A periodical is anything that comes out with regular issues. A daily newspaper, a weekly news magazine, a monthly journal, and an annual book series are all examples of periodicals.

Popular, Scholarly or Trade?

• POPULAR
  • Aimed at wider audiences
  • Written in less formal language text
  • Not necessarily written by research experts
  • Examples at Wade College include Time Magazine, Vogue, Wired
• SCHOLARLY
  • Written by experts in a field for the purpose of sharing with other researchers. Example: Peer Review
  • Requires full bibliography/citations Example: APA, MLA, Chicago
  • Content is advanced, heavy language,
  • For more information: Check out Anatomy of a Scholarly Article from North Carolina State University Libraries
  • Examples at Wade College include Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing
• TRADE
  • Specialized but not necessarily scholarly
  • Aimed at professionals, intended for trends
  • Example at Wade College include: Art Forum, Interior Design, Texas Architect

Creating great content requires basic information gathering, research and problem-solving. Use the 5W's and an H to evaluate resources or anytime that you are writing an essay, story or an article that someone else may read. Remember to ask yourself:

5W's and H

• WHO
  • Who is the book/article about?
  • Who wrote the book/article?
  • What are that persons credentials?
• WHAT
  • What is the purpose of the book/article?
  • What evidence does the author present?
  • What evidence does the author fail to present?
• WHEN
  • Is the information current or historical?
  • Has the information been updated/revised?
• WHERE
  • Where can I find more information?
  • Does the author have citations to other sources?
  • Evaluate those citations
• WHY
  • Why is the information presented valid? Not valid?
  • Why does the information support or challenge your research?
• HOW
  • How does the information relate to your other research?

Why is citing important?

It's important to cite sources you used in your research for several reasons:

• To prove that you've done proper research by listing the sources you used to get your information
• To give credit to other researchers for their ideas
• To avoid plagiarism by quoting words and ideas used by other authors
• To allow your reader to find the sources you used through a citation list, reference page or footnotes.

Citations are a way to identify published information from a book, article, chapter, web site etc.

Elements of a citation

Citations consist of elements, and contain all the information necessary to identify and track down the publications.

Elements include:

• author name(s)
• titles of books, articles, and journals
• date of publication
• page numbers
• volume and issue numbers (for articles)

Citation Styles

Citations may look different, depending on what is being cited and which style was used to create them.

The three major citation styles are:

1. American Psychological Association (APA) for Social Sciences
2. Modern Language Association (MLA) for Humanities
3. Chicago Manual of Style for Various Other Subjects

For more information on Citation Resources check out Purdue OWL