 As students, it's important for us to think critically about the information we encounter. Learning to evaluate articles helps us understand and make better use of such information. Briefly, let's think about how to evaluate the articles we find in terms of three useful categories, scholarly, popular, and authoritative. For a quick overview of what we mean by these three terms, check out the Beam Library's video, Focused Beam Searching for Scholarly. First, it's important to understand what we mean by article. Articles are a kind of periodical literature, which simply means that articles are found in resources that are published daily, weekly, monthly, or at different times throughout the year. Periodical literature includes newspapers, magazines, trade publications, and journals. But the nature of the articles that different kinds of periodical literature offer can be very different. As students, it's important for us to determine the nature of the articles that we encounter, and we can use three questions to help us evaluate an article. Is it scholarly? Is it popular? Is it authoritative? Is it scholarly? Scholarly articles are typically associated with scholarly journals, like the Journal of Language, Literature, and Culture, or Behavioral Neuroscience. Author's credentials, typically their title and university, are often provided. Scholarly articles usually have an abstract, a brief capture of what to expect in the article. They will almost always contain footnotes or in-notes and offer a bibliography of works referenced. Scholarly articles are also distinguished by their use of technical language. Such articles are usually written to inform or challenge other scholars. Typically, graphs, charts, or illustrations are the only images you find in a scholarly article. They very rarely contain advertisements. And one further feature of a scholarly article is the peer review process by which it's been accepted for publication. Many scholarly articles undergo a strict review by peers before they ever make it to publication. These are many of the features common to scholarly articles. Is it popular? Articles from magazines, newspapers, and trade publications are usually considered popular in nature. Articles written for popular audiences often contain images and perhaps advertisements. The language of such articles, especially when the article is from a newspaper or magazine, is typically less technical. Trade publications, which are written by and for a specific audience like business managers, advertisers, or game designers, can contain technical language but are still considered popular in nature. Sometimes, it's difficult to know for certain if an article is popular or scholarly. In such cases, it's a good idea to check with your professor to confirm the appropriateness of an article for your specific project. Keep in mind that articles written on the popular level can still be authoritative. Which leads us to our final question. Is it authoritative? Depending on the type of research, you may need to engage popular rather than scholarly literature. And this is especially true when the topic of your research is current or recent events. Scholarly articles take time to research and to write, review, and publish. Popular literature is often published very quickly and is able to respond to recent news and events almost immediately. When engaging popular literature, it's important to determine whether or not the article is authoritative and reliable. Is the article published in a reputable source like Time or Newsweek, for example? And what type of article is it? Is it a report or is it an opinion piece? Can you determine if the author is an expert in the subject? Establishing for yourself the authority of an article is well worth the time invested. When in doubt, check with your professor or feel free to ask a beam librarian for help. Here, it's also important to consider how you will use the article you've discovered. Keep your thesis in mind. If you need information that will directly support or provide evidence for the argument of your thesis, then scholarly articles are often best for this purpose. However, if you need stories, anecdotes, or descriptions that help illustrate your thesis or the points you're making, then popular articles can provide a wealth of sources. Of course, these are loose guidelines. The information you need and how you will use this information depends on the nature and requirements of your specific project, but keep in mind that it's not always necessary to limit yourself to high-level scholarly resources. This is especially true when searching article databases like EBSCO, for example. Students are often tempted to click the scholarly peer-reviewed box, but please keep in mind that scholarly peer-reviewed refers to academic journals that go through a very strict peer-review process. Clicking this box can greatly limit your results, causing you to miss a wealth of helpful resources. Limiting by type in this box provides a helpful way to manage your results. For example, clicking magazines here will pull up only items from popular-level magazine literature. As a side note, knowing how to use databases to find articles is a beneficial skill for college-level research. There are many strategies for effective searching in EBSCO, so be sure to watch Beam Library's video using EBSCO databases. So when you encounter an article, be sure to pause and consider is it scholarly? Is it popular? Is it authoritative? And remember that your Beam librarians are here to help. If you have a question about the scholarly nature of an article, feel free to ask a librarian. We look forward to assisting you as you learn to better evaluate the information you encounter.