To provide articles generally designed to inform or entertain and to sell advertising.

To present the results of original research, conference proceedings, or offer a review of the literature to professionals or scholars in a given field.

AUDIENCE

Intended for a mass audience or general readership.

Intended for specialized readers who are scholars or professionals.

Designed to be attractive and appealing with much use of color, graphics, and illustrations.

Has a plain appearance.  May contain graphs, charts or tables, which are usually in black and white.

Presented in a non-technical, easy to read, style that can be understood by anyone with a high school level reading level.

The style is usually highly technical and may contain jargon specific to the author’s field.  Comprehension requires the reader’s full attention.

Authors are often staff writers or freelancers, professionals writing to make money.  These authors usually write articles on a range of subjects for a number of magazines.

Authors are creditable scholars or professionals in a specialized field.  They publish to share findings and to promote their academic and professional standing.  Often they are unpaid for articles.

Magazines are produced by commercial publishers.  Occasionally, some may be published by a professional association.

Most journals are published by or in association with an academic institution or a professional organization.

ADVERTISING

Advertisements promoting a wide variety of products and services are found in magazines.  These ads are professionally produced and frequently appear in color.

Journals contain little or no advertising.  Ads that do appear either directly relate to the reader’s scholarly/professional interests or are job announcements.

Most magazines do not formally note their sources in a bibliography.

Sources are cited in journals by footnotes or bibliographies using a standardized format.

Articles in magazines may be found in general indexes such as EBSCOhost's Academic Search Premiere or ProQuest's Research Library Complete.

Scholarly journals are indexed in many different types of sources depending upon the subject you are interested in.  For example in ERIC one would find scholarly journals for Education, while in CINAHL one would find scholarly journals for Nursing.

Time
US News & World Report
Car and Driver
Businessweek
Ladies Home Journal