You are probably familiar with many popular magazines and may even subscribe to several. They are characterized by bright glossy formats, many pictures, short articles that may be unsigned and without footnotes, and lots of colorful advertising. Their titles range from the sensational supermarket tabloids to the more informative ones like Discover, Atlantic Monthly, World Press Review, and New Republic .
Popular magazines can be good sources for current general news, sports, and popular culture.
While many popular magazines are available in college libraries, you may hear your professor say that these popular magazines are not acceptable for college level papers and research. Some databases permit you to specify only these journals but you can always check your titles in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory to find out whether a particular magazine or journal is peer reviewed. To obtain popular magazine articles, first you need to identify citations to these articles, then find out if the Library owns a copy of the magazine in which the article appears. First find citations by using a database that includes popular magazines. If you do not know which database to search, select Databases by Subject and then the Interdisciplinary category.