Types of Periodicals

TYPES OF PERIODICALS Periodicals come in a variety of styles and are published for a variety of audiences. They offer news accounts, opinions, commentary, perspective, scholarly analysis, and reports of research findings. They range from brief newsletters published by trade organizations to in-depth journals published by scientific societies and university presses. All periodicals are published at more or less regular intervals, from daily newspapers to semi-annual journals. You must make active choices about the types of periodicals needed for a given research project. “Popular press” magazines may be appropriate for limited purposes, but the most important source for university-level research is scholarly journals. Some of the main categories of periodicals are described below. PERIODICAL Newspapers Examples: The Columbian The New York Times The Washington Post Popular Magazines Examples: Time Newsweek Professional, Trade and Industry journals Example: American Machinist Journals of Opinion Examples: Commentary The New Republic Scholarly/research journals Examples: Journal of Reading New England Journal of Medicine VALUE OR USE METHOD OF ACCESS • • • • • • • • Current information News stories Opinion and commentary Texts of speeches, etc. Geographic focus Current events overviews Nontechnical language Charts, pictures, graphs • Written for practitioners in applied fields Product information Current trends and practices Written from a political viewpoint (liberal, conservative) General educated audience Commentary on politics, society Book reviews General Indexes/Databases: - EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier - ProQuest Reports of original research In-depth analyses of topics Usually contain Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Literature Cited sections Use technical vocabulary Specialized disciplinary indexes, abstracts: - CINAHL (Nursing) - ERIC (Education) - Health Source Nursing Academic - Medline (Medicine) - EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier - ProQuest • • • • • • • • • • Best Newspaper Indexes: - ProQuest - New York Times Historical (in ProQuest) Periodical indexes/databases: - EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier - ProQuest General Indexes/Databases: - EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier - ProQuest