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COMMUNICATIONS STUDIES & MEDIA ARTS 4M03 - Communication, Culture and Technology

How to Evaluate Resources

Scholarly Versus Popular

Scholarly versus Popular Articles What are the differences? Authors: Scholarly authors may be researchers and scholars such as university professors. Popular source authors include staff writers such as journalists and freelance writers. Audience: Scholarly audience could include professors, students, and other researchers. Popular source audiences are the general public. Purpose: Scholarly articles are written to present and share original research or experiments. The purpose of popular sources is to inform, entertain or persuade the general public. Language: Scholarly articles use formal, technical and specialized language. Popular sources use every day language. References: Scholarly sources use footnotes, endnotes, bibliographies and suggested reading. Popular sources typically use few to no citations.

Grey Literature

Grey Literature is

“…information produced on all levels of government, academia, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body.”

Schnopfel J. (2010, December).Towards a Prague definition of grey literature. Paper presented at: Twelfth International Conference on Grey Literature: Transparency in Grey Literature. Grey Tech Approaches to High Tech Issues, Prague, Czech Republic  Available from: http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00581570/document.

It can be used to supplement books and journals when conducting research as it provides a different perspective and is commonly more current than different materials.

Examples of Grey Literature include:

  • conference papers and proceedings
  • government documents
  • reports
  • policy documents

and many more which you can find here.

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