Popular vs. Scholarly Sources
[You can continue reading the tutorial pages here or watch the popular vs scholarly sources video and continue the tutorial on the next page.]
Before we dive into specific types of sources, let’s take a moment to talk about two broad types of sources: popular and scholarly.
Popular sources can be written and published by anyone and aren’t always checked for accuracy (although some may be fact-checked, or publishers may add notes with corrections later). Some examples of popular sources include news articles or videos, .com and .org websites, social media posts, blogs, etc. These sources can be great for current events (especially things happening right at that moment), personal experiences with an event or topic, popular opinions, and more! They are also great for learning about a new topic as they are easier to understand than scholarly sources.
Scholarly sources are books or articles written by researchers, professors, or other experts in the field and are usually based on research studies. Scholarly articles go through the peer-review process where they’re reviewed by other experts in the field before they’re published. These are great sources to find research and expert opinions! However, they can take a while after an event (sometimes up to a year!) to be researched, edited, peer-reviewed, and published. They are written for other experts and can take more work to understand them.
Scholarly articles from journals that are written by professors, scientists, and other experts and have gone through a review process by other experts. They are often reporting on a study they did.