 In her social work classes, Anne was often required to use research articles. The first time she was asked to find a research article, she was a little confused. Was her research article the same as a scholarly article? Anne knew that scholarly articles are written by experts and are published in academic journals, such as the Journal of Social Work Practice. And she knew that scholarly articles have been through the peer review process. This means that the article was reviewed by other experts in the field prior to publication. Since Anne knew all about scholarly articles, she was surprised when she was told that the article she found was not the right type of her article for her assignment, because it wasn't a research article. Her professor explained that scholarly journals publish many different types of articles, and not all of them are research articles. Research articles are those that report the findings of an original research study or experiment. Some research articles describe quantitative research, some describe qualitative research, and some describe mixed methods research. In research articles, the author or authors are describing their own original study or experiment. In another type of article often found in scholarly journals, the author does not describe her own research study. Instead, she reviews and analyzes a number of research articles on the same topic that were written by other scholars. Articles of this type include literature reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. These types of review articles can be very helpful in summarizing the research findings on a topic over a period of time. Along with research articles and review articles, Anne learned that scholarly journals sometimes publish other types of articles, such as descriptions of recent books in the field and commentaries related to the editor. Although published in scholarly journals, book reviews, editorials, commentaries, reflections, and other similar articles are not considered to be scholarly articles. These articles do not describe the results of an original research study, and they have not been through the peer review process. At first, Anne sometimes had difficulty determining which type of article she had found. However, she learned to carefully read the abstract for the article, as this often described what type of article it was. She also realized that research articles often have specific format, with clearly labeled sections such as a method section, a result section, and a discussion section. Anne also learned to search for the specific type of article she wanted in her search terms. For example, in addition to her specific search term, she would type in quantitative research or literature review to limit her results to certain types of articles. Learning about the different kinds of articles in scholarly journals made it easier for Anne to always find a specific kind of article she needed.