Periodicals are publications that are printed and distributed at regular intervals. There are three main types of periodicals:
Magazines and newspapers are considered popular sources and Journals are considered scholarly. For your research paper on surgery, you will be focusing on using articles from Nursing journals.
What does it mean for an article to be peer reviewed?
Journals are considered peer reviewed if the articles that are published in that journal have gone through the process highlighted above. Since the peer review proccess is quite rigourous, articles from peer reviewed journals are highly respected. When searching articles databases for peer reviewed articles, you can often limit your results to peer reviewed articles by going to the advanced search page.
Anatomy of a Scholarly Article:
Characteristics:
--Purpose is for educating
--Articles written by scholars and experts
--Articles are indepth and long
--Language of articles is technical
--Sources are cited
--No advertising
--Graphs, charts and illustrations are used to show research
--Purpose is to entertain
--Articles written by journalists
--Uses flashy pictures and headlines to attract readers
--Normally no citations included
--Articles about current events and culture
--Published monthly and sometimes weekly
--Written for the general public thus writing is easy to understand
--Purpose is for entertaining
--Articles written by journalists
--Articles published daily
--Usually no citation
--Articles written to report current events
--Articles are often short in length
--Pictures and headlines used to grab attention