Information Literacy Tutorial: Introduction

In this section you will learn about academic publications. What is academic communication? What makes a publication ‘academic’?

First, we will look at scholarly (or academic) communication. This lies at the heart of academic literature, since academics communicate through academic articles, conference papers and other academic publications.

The publishing process for these publications often involves ‘peer review’, a process in which other academics in the same field assess the information to check that it meets the requirements for an academic publication. (See the chapter on peer review.)

We will then look at the types of academic literature, which can be divided into primary and secondary sources (see the relevant chapter), and at how academic literature is fundamentally different from popularized literature and professional/trade literature. You can find information on this in the chapter ‘Academic Literature’.

Academic literature is published in different forms. These are discussed in the chapter ‘Types of Literature’.

After studying this section you will be able to distinguish academic publications from professional and popularizing publications. You will know what the main types of academic literature are.