| Popular | Trade | Scholarly | |
| Author | Journalists, freelance writers, commentators, sometimes anonymous. | Practitioners or specialists in field or industry or journalists with subject expertise | Researchers,scientists,scholars. Credentials listed |
| Audience | General public | Specific industry, trade, organization, or profession; jargon often used | Other scholars, professionals, or students familiar with the field |
| Purpose | Inform, entertain | Describe issues, problems, or trends in the field; product information, forecasts, statistics. | Report and share original research, experiments, theories; contribute to the body of knowledge about a particular subject |
| Citations | Sources may be cited or identified, but usually not or obscure | Practices vary; some cite sources and some do not | Authors cite their sources with in-text citations, in footnotes or bibliographies, often extensive |
| Peer-Review | No. Editors look for grammar, errors, plagiarism | No. Similar to popular magazines. | Yes. Extensive peer-review process. |
| Abstract | No | No, but there might be a summary | Yes. Summarizing paragraph before the article with the authors goals, objectives, results, and analysis. |
| Publisher | Commercial publisher | Commercial and trade publishers, professional associations | Professional organizations, universities, research institutes, scholarly presses |
| Terminology | Not technical, written for general audience, basic education | Uses jargon of the field | Uses technical vocabulary of the discipline; assumes college-educated reader with some knowledge of the subject |
| Examples | Sports Illustrated; Newsweek; Rolling Stone, National Geographic | RN, Advertising Age, Modern Machine Shop, Progressive Grocer | Journal of Cultural Geography, Developmental Psychology, Renaissance Quarterly, Biochemistry |