Popular and Scholarly Sources

What Are Scholarly Sources? What Are Popular Sources?

You are currently in the module on "Popular and Scholarly Sources" in a larger tutorial. Each research tutorial includes modules of topics related to the overall tutorial learning objectives. Please go through all the pages in this module by clicking on the “Next” button on the bottom of the page in order to progress. If you would like to track your progress, be sure to log in with your UNCG credentials at the top right of the module. Each module includes Quick Checks on every page. These Quick Checks do not produce a certificate; they are optional and do not track your progress. Certificates are created by completing a whole tutorial, so be sure to complete all the modules within a tutorial in order to generate a certificate. You can also take a screenshot of your progress page. 

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Time needed to complete this module: 10 minutes

Learning Objectives: 

  • Students will identify source formats relevant to their discipline, information need, and context. 
  • Students will categorize and contextualize sources based on format and purpose.

When you’re asked to find sources of information for a paper or project, you may not know where to start. Your instructor may tell you that you must include a certain number of “scholarly” sources. But what does this mean? Simply put, scholarly sources have been through a more rigorous review process than popular sources. Check out this infographic created by UNCG librarians, to get a sense of the differences between scholarly and popular sources.

Machine Readable PDF of Scholarly and Popular Comparison Infographic

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