Master of Counselling
Counselling Literature

Popular, Professional, and Scholarly Literature

Counselling, like other areas of professional practice and research, has a variety of types of literature associated with it that includes popular, professional and scholarly sources. Let's consider each type in turn, with particular attention to scholarly literature, which you will likely be seeking most often in your graduate degree research.

Popular - Popular literature is written for a general audience and does not required specialized knowledge to understand it. Examples include nonfiction books written for lay readers, and the content of general newspapers and magazines. Articles in popular magazines are written by journalists who may not be named, and are not experts in the subject matter they write about. Popular magazines often are for-profit publications with a heavy reliance on advertising revenue. Examples of popular newspapers and magazines include The Globe and Mail, Maclean's, and Walrus.

Professional - Professional literature is more focused than the popular literature because its intended audience is the practitioner working in a field, rather than the general reader, or researcher or scholar. Books and periodical articles from the professional literature may not contain references to information sources consulted by their authors, and they may or may not have been formally evaluated before being accepted for publication. Examples of professional journals include Counselor: The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, HR Magazine, and Professional School Counseling. While information from the professional literature may be useful for some research projects focusing on professional practice, you should use it with caution if your research project is primarily of an academic nature. Your professor may prefer that you use information that is scholarly or peer reviewed.

Image of a book Scholarly - There are many different ways to distinguish between popular, professional and scholarly literature. Scholarly literature is generally aimed at other experts or scholars in the same field, is written in an academic style, and may employ highly technical terminology not ordinarily understood by non-experts. In addition to the names of all authors and their institutional affiliations, scholarly literature contains citations to the information sources used by the authors, and each manuscript undergoes a careful quality control process before being accepted for publication. These indicators should be identifiable for all works regardless of their publication format (e.g., book, journal article, online article). It is a good idea to verify the scholarly nature of an information source before you decide to use it in a research project.

The quality control process used to evaluate the worthiness of a scholarly manuscript is variously called peer-review, refereeing, evaluation, or vetting. All of these terms mean a submitted manuscript is carefully reviewed by one or more experts in the subject area of the manuscript, who provide feedback on the manuscript's quality, contribution to the research literature, and academic merit, and make a recommendation to accept or reject it. The recommendations are handled by the editor or editorial board of the book or journal publisher. Manuscript authors and reviewers are often associated with a university, research institution, scholarly society, or related professional organization (e.g., American Psychological Association, University of Toronto Press).

The titles of scholarly journals usually specify their subject matter clearly and may contain terms such as "journal," "review" "research," "studies," or "theory." Often an abstract will precede the article itself, especially for science and social science journals. Obtaining acceptance of a manuscript in the top-ranked scholarly journals is a highly competitive process, and the rejection rates can far exceed acceptance rates. Examples of top-ranked scholarly journals in counselling psychology include Counseling Psychologist, Journal of Counseling Psychology, and Personnel Psychology. If you are unsure whether a journal containing an article you wish to use is peer-reviewed, you can search for the journal title in Ulrichsweb.com. If the journal is peer-reviewed, you will see this symbol beside the title.

Practice Exercise

Go to the following three Web-accessible items and determine the overall nature of their content. Does the information and other content appear to be predominantly popular, professional or scholarly? Can you identify differences in presentation, language, or who the authors are?

Discussion Questions

  1. Why is it important to use scholarly works in research projects on counselling topics?
  2. When is it appropriate to use articles in more popular sources? (e.g., Psychology Today)
  3. What clues might suggest a book or journal is scholarly in nature?

Additional Sources of Guidance

Maintained by Rumi Graham

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