Scholarly source
Also called: academic source, peer-reviewed source
A source written by researchers for other researchers, reporting or reviewing original work, with full citations.
Scholarly sources share a shape: named authors with institutional affiliations, an abstract, a methods section or an explicit argument, and a reference list. They are written to be checked, which is why the citations are there.
The reference list is the quickest test. Popular writing about research summarises and rarely cites; scholarly writing cites everything, because its readers are expected to follow the chain.
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See also
Popular sourceA source written for a general audience — journalism, magazines, most websites — rather than for specialists.Peer reviewThe process by which independent researchers in a field evaluate a manuscript before a journal agrees to publish it.Grey literatureResearch and reporting published outside commercial channels: government and NGO reports, working papers, theses, standards, and conference material.