How can you tell the difference between a scholarly and nonscholarly source?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

You can differentiate scholarly works from nonscholarly ones by looking for a few characteristics. Most important, professional articles and books published in political science or other disciplines will often go through a peer-review process. The most common peer-review standard is that a journal or book editor will send an article or book manuscript submitted for publication to one or more scholars with expertise in the topical area of the article. The review is performed in a blind fashion, in which the reviewers are not told the author’s name to ensure that the review is fair. Otherwise, reviewers may be inclined to reject a piece authored by a particular author based on a personal grievance or accept a piece written by a friend. The blind process ensures that reviewers will assess only the quality of the work. The editor will rely on the peer reviewers’ comments to suggest revisions of the work and assess whether or not the work makes a sufficient contribution to the literature to deserve publication. The peer-review process helps assure that the work published in scholarly journals and books is of the best possible quality and of the most value to the discipline. It also assures the reader that, although there still may be mistakes or invalid or unreliable claims, the article or book has been vetted by one or more experts on the topic. Alternatively, some scholarly journals and books are reviewed only by the editorial staff. Although this method provides a check on the quality of the work, it is usually not as rigorous as a blind peer-review. The type of review a journal or book publisher uses will typically be explained in the journal or on the journal’s or publisher’s website. In addition to a peer-review process, some other indicators can differentiate scholarly from nonscholarly work. Scholarly articles and books are usually written by academics, journalists, political actors, or other political practitioners, so looking for a description of the authors is the place to start. Scholarly books are published by both university presses and commercial presses for a professional audience rather than a general audience. As such, the work will include complex analyses and be written with the assumption that the reader is familiar with the literature and method. Scholarly work will also cite other scholarly sources, which can be easily verified by scanning the works cited, footnotes, or endnotes.