Making the distinction between magazines vs journals

Popular magazines and scholarly journals have different purposes and different audiences.

In case you are confused about the distinction between magazines versus journals, here are some clues you can use to determine the type of a publication you are dealing with:

Popular Magazine                                                           Scholarly Journals

geared to laymen, nonprofessionals                            geared to researchers, professionals

articles written by staff, sometimes unsigned              articles written by researchers and experts

discuss current events, issues of general interest       report primary research results

no bibliographies at the end of articles                         bibliographies at the end of articles

advertisements                                                                no advertisements

color pictures                                                                   statistical tables, diagrams

Making the distinction between original research vs report/review articles

   Original research articles include operational methodology, which means a procedure reported in enough detail to be followed like a recipe by other researches, and an analysis and discussion of data gathered by the researcher(s)/author(s) of the articles.  Original research articles nearly always follow a standard format which includes:

Abstract
Introduction or Literature Review

Methods

Results

Discussion/Conclusion
Bibliography/References

   Review/report articles are different from original research articles, providing overviews or reports on different topics and synthesizing information gathered from other, sometimes original research sources.  Although these articles may be considered "research" articles, they are however reports based on other scientists' original publications .

Thanks to Tina Hovekamp for this content (http://web.cocc.edu/thovekamp/HHP242/index.html)