Understanding Scholarly/Academic Research

Scholarly research articles or journals share these characteristics: 

• scholarly works are considered unbiased within their discipline and are backed up with evidence
• are published in academic, scholarly, scientific or empirical journals
• reports on original research  in a specific academic fields
• results are generalizable across populations
• use a research methodology that is replicable
• their authors are most often experts in the field and have their credentials listed

The structure of a scholarly article includes:

• a hypothesis: a proposed question
• a methods section
• conclusions
• suggestions for further research
• a citation reference list

All content in the library is credible, but not all of it is scholarly