Georgakopoulou 1

Ioli Georgakopoulou

Professor Elizabeth Cuddy

English 119

12 November 2109

Difference between regular and scholarly article

The two chosen articles have a common topic - ergotherapy. Ergotherapy is a type of

therapy that combines ergonomic principles with physiotherapy. The main purpose of

ergotherapy is to help people after an accident to develop, recover and improve as well as

maintain the skills they need for daily living and working. This paper will deal with an

argumentative analysis of the two sources by comparing and contrasting the different approaches

used in each article. One of the sources discusses is a scholarly journal article entitled

“Techniques of Industrial Therapy, Ergotherapy, and Recreative Methods”, written by Douglas

Bennett (Springer link). The other source, taken from a commercial website, was written by

Oliver Radosar and its title is “What is Ergo-therapy?” (About ergo-therapy).

Starting from the title, it is apparent that these articles approach the topic differently. The

first one is much more specific, while the second one is more general. ​The title is an essential

way to attract the article to potential readers' attention. In scholarly articles it has to be specific

enough to give the reader a good idea of what is going to be discussed. In non-scholarly articles,

the title can be much broader and discuss a general concept or idea rather than focusing on one
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aspect of it. The title must therefore be as accurate, informative and complete as possible when it

comes to scholarly articles. By reading the title of the first article, ​“Techniques of Industrial

Therapy, Ergotherapy, and Recreative Methods”, one can understand exactly what is going to be

discussed. The second article’s title is a general one, leaving a plethora of possible points of

discussion.

The title of the article lays mainly in its intended audience. The audience of journal

articles are usually people who are part of academia. Academicians need to instantly know the

topic of the article without having to dig deep into the article itself. ​Such articles are

predominantly written by doctors, professors, and other experts in their field. The first article

discusses in this paper was written by an M.D., a person knowledgeable about the subject.

Hence, the vocabulary used is much more specific, scientific in nature, and professional

terminology is employed. Because of this, laymen would have trouble fully understanding the

topic of the discussion. On the other hand, the second article uses a much simpler language. The

style of writing is understandable to a regular person, and general information is presented in a

way so that most of the audience can easily comprehend its content.

Another major difference between a scholarly article and a regular article is the length of

the article. Scholarly articles are typically longer than non-scholarly ones. This is because the

authors of scientific writings gather and publish research that focuses on a very specific field of

inquiry. This specificity means that an abundance of information including statistical data is

presented within such works. Data is often presented with charts and tables. In contrast, regular

articles are shorter because they present thoughts and ideas that do not go into too much detail

and are easy to read. Non-scholarly articles may also include the author's personal experiences
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and knowledge gained through those experiences. Scholarly articles, on the other hand, are based

on facts and don’t rely on opinions and their subjectivity.

The first thing that is noticeable is that the journal article usually preceded with an

abstract. It provides an overview of what the article discusses or reveals and frequently is useful

in identifying articles that report the results of scientific studies. ​An abstract is a brief summary

of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding, or any in-depth analysis of a

particular subject and is often used to help the reader quickly as certain the paper's purpose.

Usually, journal articles are part of a book that’s why the tone is more serious in addition to the

regular articles that are more simple.

In scholarly articles the author cannot published an article whenever he thinks his

scholarly work is ready. Need to have a peer review, more specific, research, or thoughts to the

investigation of other people who are specialists in the same field , before a paper describing this

work is published in a journal. The peer review helps the publisher decide whether the work

should be ac​cepted to be published or rejected.

Also, in the regular articles there is no smooth coherence between the paragraphs because

the author write down his thoughts to inform the reader without thinking about the way in which

he will present his ideas. It must also be noted that journal articles are written in an exceptionally

formal and technical subject related language and planned for giving further research and

knowledge into a chosen point.

In conclusion, there are a lot of differences between journal scholarly article

and a regular article. The first one is a regular published collection of articles that attention on

specific subjects to a particular academic profession. Someone can easily recognize it because of
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the large length. The second one is much shorter and the author can address any topic and reflect

his opinion without has somebody to check if it is appropriate or not. Both of the articles refers

to the same topic but the journal article is more reliable than the regular article.
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References

Bennett D. (1975) Techniques of Industrial Therapy, Ergotherapy, and Recreative

Methods. In: Argelander H. et al. (eds) Soziale und Angewandte Psychiatrie. Psychiatrie

der Gegenwart (Forschung und Praxis), vol 3. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

http://differenttherapy.com/en/ergo-therapy/index.html