Once you have gained a good background in your topic, and gotten some perspectives from books, the next place you may want to look for information is journal or magazine articles. Sometimes students begin their research with this step. It may be that if you are researching a topic you have some familiarity with, going straight for articles is an appropriate strategy. But keep an open mind about needing to go back to more general sources to fill in any holes in your knowledge as you do so.
But before we get to the "where do I get articles" question -- Did you know there are more than one kind of article?
Most publications that come out with new issues on some timetable (librarians call them "periodicals") can be put into one of two, broad categories: Scholarly journals or Popular magazines. These publications have some big differences, and the kinds of information you get from each of them will be different. What are some of these differences?
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"Popular articles" *
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Scholarly Articles
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Are written for a general audience--not specialists
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Are written for professionals or specialists in a field
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Are written by journalists
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Are written by specialists or professionals in a field
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Are stories typically assigned to writers by an editor
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Are written by scholars who are sharing their research with fellow scholars. These articles go through a process of peer-review
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Are written in language aimed at non specialists--"anyone" can understand
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May be written using highly specialized or technical language--the "jargon" of a field
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Can be short, to the point, summaries of a story or idea
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Are more lengthy, explore a topic in depth
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Magazines are often filled with pictures, advertising for general products
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Journals rarely have pictures (though there may be graphs of data) and only have ads for professional tools, if any at all
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Never have a bibliography or list of references
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Always have a bibliography or list of references
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*This is becoming a kind of anachronistic way of looking at sources, since the Internet has made the proliferation of multiple types of information possible.
Mostly your teachers will make it clear whether they expect you to use scholarly sources, popular sources, or a combination. If you have a question about whether a source you are looking at is scholarly or popular, you can read this to learn how to distinguish scholarly journals from other periodicals.
Are these articles scholarly or "something else"?
Click on the link below to access the game to record your answers.