If your instructor ever asks you to find a magazine or a journal, you might be wondering, "What is the difference?"
Magazine
time.com/prevention.com
- Written for a general audience at about the 7th grade level.
- Articles are usually written by people with journalism or English degrees. The authors don't always have a degree in the field they are writing about.
- Usually have a lot of pictures and advertisements. The goal of a magazine is to sell magazines, so they put something eye-catching on the cover to get your attention.
Journal
nursingcenter.com/journals.lww.com
- Contains information and research on a particular field of study.
- Articles in journals are written by people who have a degree in that particular or similar field or they have a lot of experience in that area of study.
- The articles are usually written for the professional and may use technical language.
- The goal of a journal is to further knowledge in a particular field.
- Articles usually contain abstracts, graphs, and bibliographies.
- Peer Reviewed journals means that other specialists in that field review the article prior to accepting for publication.
- There are journals for all different types of subjects (business, political science, nursing, libraries, science, history, etc.)
- Information is more reliable than a magazine, because the articles are written by professionals in that field.
