Study Help: Scholarly Sources Explained

Often at university you will be told to use ‘scholarly’, academic or ‘peer reviewed’ sources to support your ideas in your assignments. But what does this mean? Scholarly sources can also be called academic sources.

These include journal articles, books, book chapters, conference papers and theses. Sources such as Wikipedia, newspaper articles magazines, trade journals newsletters, blogs, social media sites and personal websites on the other hand, are not. They can be useful for background reading around a topic – but they’re not scholarly resources.

So let’s look at what a scholarly source is. A scholarly source is written by researchers within a subject area reports on research findings contains comprehensive in-text citations and a reference list or bibliography uses specialised terminology and a formal writing style and is often peer reviewed or refereed. A peer reviewed or refereed journal article is assessed by experts within the field before it is published.

If the article does not meet publication standards, it can be rejected, or sent back to the author for revision. Peer reviewed articles should include author details, including the organisation they work for an abstract, which summarises key points evidence of research findings in-text citations and a reference list. Many search tools such as databases and the library catalogue allow you to limit your search to scholarly, academic or peer reviewed articles Books can also be scholarly.

A scholarly book is written by experts within the field is published by a reputable, well-known publisher has a table of contents provides in-depth information on a topic or subject area includes an index to look at terms as well as in-text references and a reference list. Look for these clues when searching for scholarly sources. If you need help, just ask.