Does the article include a works cited page, footnotes, or endnotes?
Most scholarly articles will cite earlier research, and when they do, they will always give proper credit to their sources. If you see a works cited page in an article, or footnotes/endnotes indicating the sources for material in the article, chances are very good that it’s an article from a scholarly journal. On the other hand, popular publications like magazines and newspapers will almost never include footnotes, endnotes, or works cited pages in their articles. • Does the article use academic or scientific jargon? Popular magazines and newspapers tend to be written in a simple, straightforward style that a general reader can easily understand. Scholarly journals, on the other hand, are written for an audience of scholars, professors, and fellow experts–people who have no difficulty understanding the specialized vocabulary of a given subject or discipline. When talking to fellow astrophysicists, an astrophysicist will use the language of astrophysicists. But if an astrophysicist hap