Journals, Magazines and Newspapers (aka Periodicals)

Scholarly, Popular, and Trade

Periodicals are usually categorized as either popular, trade, or scholarly.

Popular periodicals cover news stories, current events, entertainment, and pastimes, and include such titles as Ebony; Ms; Newsweek; Rolling Stone; Sports Illustrated; Time; and The Hartford Courant. The main purpose of periodicals in this category is to provide information, in a general manner, to a broad audience of concerned citizens.

Trade periodicals discuss practical matters relating to a particular trade or industry and include such titles as American Libraries; Chemical Week; Security Dealer; and Restaurant Business .

Scholarly periodicals report on original research, theory, or experimentation. Scholarly articles are written by experts in their subject, who meticulously cite related research in the form of footnotes or endnotes. The language used in scholarly journals is that of the discipline covered. Scholarly periodicals include such titles as the American Economic Review; Shakespeare Quarterly; JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association; Anthropology Today; and the Journal of Experimental Psychology .

For the most part, universities are more interested in the scholarly publications than the popular or trade, and collect primarily in that category.

Indexes: Time-saving tools

At UConn, you can use online indexes which can make your research more thorough and save you time. Indexers examine all the issues of a particular set of periodicals as they appear and briefly describe each article and story they find, arranging these descriptions by topic. As no one index can cover all of the hundreds of thousands of periodicals published each year, libraries generally subscribe to several dozen different paper or electronic indexes that, together, describe the majority of the articles published in the scholarly periodicals they collect. Also, libraries generally refer to online indexes as databases.

Till recently, periodical indexes only provided citations and abstracts of the articles indexed. A CITATION is a string of information that identifies a particular article and indicates where it can be found. A citation usually includes the following elements:

• author (s) of the article;
• title of article;
• name of journal the article appears in;
• volume and issue numbers; and
• page numbers .

An ABSTRACT is a brief summary or description of the article.

Nowadays, many electronic indexes are also providing a link to the actual text of the articles indexed.

Examples of frequently consulted full text periodical indexes at the University Libraries are listed below. The entire Full Text Resources guide can be found at http://www.lib.uconn.edu/online/fulltext/.

Articles from Scholarly and Popular Journals	- Current Events - Newspapers and Journals
Academic Search Premier Great starting point -- easy to use. Over 8,000 magazines and journals are included in all disciplines.	LexisNexis Academic National and international newspapers, popular and general-interest magazines, economics and trade journals, company financial reports, legal cases and law journals, and more.
InfoTrac Good starting point -- many subjects. Limit search to "refereed publications" for scholarly articles.	iConn Newsstand iConn Newstand: provides full-text access to the following newspapers: Christian Science Monitor (1988 - ), Hartford Courant (1992 - ), Los Angeles Times (1988 - ), New York Times (1999 - ), Wall Street Journal (1984 - ), Washington Post (1987 - )
ABI/INFORM Global (business) Business and management, accounting and auditing economics, finance and financial management, law and taxation, marketing, advertising and sales, labor relations, banking, insurance, public administration and government, real estate.	Issues & Controversies In-depth information on current topics, combining objective analysis and clear explanations of opposing viewpoints. Chronologies, illustrations, maps, tables, sidebars, bibliographies and contact information.
InfoTrac Health & Wellness Resource Center Full-text medical and professional journals and fitness magazines, health-related pamphlets, and many encyclopedias.	New York Times Historical A full-image archive of the entire historical run of The New York Times; complete coverage from 1851-2000. Contains: display and classified ads, comics and cartoons, photos, maps, graphics, etc., editorials and commentary, literary criticism, and in-depth coverage of science and politics.
JSTOR Academic complement of scholarly and many primary source materials from the 19th and 20th centuries.	CQ Library CQ Weekly: legislative news and analysis. CQ Researcher: covers the most current and controversial issues of the day with complete summaries, insight into all sides of the issues, bibliographies and more.
Project Muse Project MUSE® offers nearly 200 quality journal titles and covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others. Back issues may go back to 1993, but most MUSE(R) titles do not predate 1995 and many are more current.	Factiva (formerly Dow Jones Interactive) Company, industry, and market data, stock price history reports, company financial reports and company-to-industry and company-to-company comparison reports, and full text access to hundreds of newspapers, general interest magazines and academic journals.

Some Citation/Abstract indexes focus on specific disciplines and contain references to articles from the entire body of scholarly literature of that subject. Using these databases gives you an expansive look at the research going on in the world. The UConn Libraries own a percentage of the articles found in these databases, but almost all can be ordered through our InterLibrary Loan department. Some of the discipline specific databases are:

ERIC	indexes education journals
MLA	indexes language and literature journals
Medline	indexes medical journals
PsycINFO	indexes psychology journals

To access journal indexes by title or subject , go to the Research Databases Locator page.

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