Guidelines for contributors are usually listed somewhere in the publication. The language of scholarly journals is that of the discipline covered. It assumes some degree of subject knowledge on the part of the reader. The main purpose of a scholarly journal is to report original research or experimentation in order to make such information available to the rest of the scholarly world. Most scholarly journals are published by a specific professional organization.
Periodical indexes provide subject access to articles appearing in a variety of magazines.
Most of our subject indexes concentrate upon scholarly journals as their information base, such as Education Index, Humanities Index , International Political Science Abstracts , Social Sciences Index, PsycINFO , etc. However, some indexes do NOT concentrate upon scholarly journals. For example, Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature heavily refers to popular and opinion magazines. Relatively few scholarly journals are included in this source, with the exception of the fields of accounting, law, and medicine. Periodical Abstracts covers both popular magazines as well as scholarly journals.