Scholarly journal articles tend to be very narrowly focused on a specific discipline, and their intended audience is experts working in that discipline. They do not provide extensive background or introduction to the topic. Journal articles are considered one of the most reliable forms of information because the go through a process called peer review. The peer review process means that when Dr. X submits an article to the Journal of Z , the editors of the journal will send his or her article to be analyzed by other researchers in the author's field. The reviewers will then study the article and make recommendations to Dr. X for revision or further research.
Many people commonly confuse scholarly journals with trade magazines.
As mentioned above, trade magazines, while valuable sources of information, do not go through a peer review process and are generally written for a more general audience. They will not contain in-depth, scholarly information like scholarly journal articles. Because they are published very quickly, trade magazines are most useful for keeping up with the news in the field. Click here for a list of important scholarly journals for engineers. An index database provides a listing of articles published in a wide array of journals.