JB - Scholarly Journals Lesson

It is important to understand the difference between a popular magazine and a scholarly journal.   Since the main purpose of a scholarly journal is to add to the scholarly knowledge of the subject, I'd like you to think about taking a visit to your medical doctor.   As you sit in the waiting room, you look over and decide to peruse a copy of the latest Time Magazine, or perhaps National Geographic catches your eye. There are captivating glossy pictures that make you want to read the article on the great animal migrations.  

In the back office, your physician is reading up on the latest H1N1 virus and is skimming through a copy of The Journal of the American Medical Association (or JAMA) for the latest epidemiological studies on how this virus mutates.   Your doctor is reading an article written by three prominent researchers who have isolated the virus and traced its origins.   She's particularly interested in their list of references at the end of the article and plans to obtain copies of these articles to trace the original research.   (Axelrod, Rise, and Charles Cooper. St. Martin's Guide to Writing. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford, 2010. 743-744. Print.)   As you can see in this type of print journalism, design and layout aren't as important.

Review

Do not judge a book by its cover, but by its content. Design is an extremely important part of newspaper and magazine layout. Any news organization demonstrates as much of its personality and attitudes through content as it does through design.    
A newspaper layout consists of the arrangement of illustrations, texts and graphics on a page. It gives prominence to the news in proportion to its importance. It also makes the pages appear attractive. It gives the paper a personality/individuality of its own, and it makes the content easy to find and read.
Most magazines like the magazine layout to be consistent from one edition to another, and the same applies to the cover; this is why notorious magazines tend to keep their style for a relatively long time.Planning a layout involves choosing elements that best represent the design.    
Design isn't as important in the layout of a scholarly journal. Scholarly journal articles are a unique type of print journalism in that they require authors to document and make verifiable the sources of the facts, ideas, and methods they used to arrive at their insights and conclusions. Scholarly articles also strive to identify and discuss the merits of alternative explanations and viewpoints.  Scholarly journals, unlike popular magazines, are designed and structured to provide the elements necessary to most thoroughly evaluate the validity and truth of an author's position.

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