WRT 102

When we talk about different types of information formats, we are talking about the different types of containers that information comes in. Examples of formats include a blog post, a newspaper article, a YouTube video, a tweet, a painting, a poem, and a peer-reviewed journal article. None of these types of formats is inherently better or worse than any other, but you want to choose information in a format that is appropriate to whatever your project is.  Writing an academic research paper is a different project than writing on a blog, for example.

When you are writing a research paper, many of your professors will require that you use "peer-reviewed" or "scholarly" or "academic" journal articles because this format tells us that the information was created by an expert in a specific field, reviewed and accepted by that expert's peers (more experts), and read by and discussed among a community of experts. Scholarship can be like a conversation between experts in a specific field, and reading a peer-reviewed journal article is one way to "listen in on" such a conversation. Use the journal title to help you understand what type of "conversation" goes on in that journal. 

The comparison graphic above explains how a peer-reviewed journal article is different from an article in a magazine or newspaper. Both formats are equally useful, but they have different purposes and go through different creation processes.  When evaluating sources, it is always helpful to understand what the "format" -- like a newspaper article or a peer-reviewed journal article -- can tell us about the information, and what the creation process is for that particular format.

Watch this short video created by NCSU to better understand the peer review process:

Peer Review in Three Minutes