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Finding Subject Area Journals: Trade Publications

What are trade publications?

Trade publications are periodicals and they look like magazines. The are written for professionals in a a specific field, but they aren't peer reviewed and don't include scholarly journal articles. They publish articles about issues of interest to professionals in a field and may refer to the results of research published in scholarly journals of that field.  Trade publications include advertisements for products of interest to the profession. The are also more likely to include letters to the editor or other content contributed by readers. 

Some examples of trade publications are

  • WomenPolice
  • Progressive Grocer

 

Finding Trade Publications

  1. Go to the library database page at https://libraryguides.chemeketa.edu/az.php
  2. Choose Academic OneFile or another article database (you will be prompted to enter your My Chemeketa username and password if you are off campus)
  3. Click on Publication Search: This may be called something different in a some databases
  4. Do a keyword search using the keywords you have identified as being related to a profession, career or academic discipline (if you get zero results, try a different keyword search)
  5. Make a Choice: Click on the name of the publication
  6. Read the publication description page:  This page will vary depending on the database you are in. Take some time to read the page looking for indications that the publication a trade publication
  • Academic OneFile and General OneFile publication description pages include information about the audience; if the audience is Trade or Professional, the publication is a trade publication
  • Trade publications are not considered scholarly;  they are not peer reviewed
  1. Choose a full text article from the trade publication:  Not all trade publications provide online full text access to articles; the publication description page should tell you whether or not full text articles are available. 

 

 

 

An example is a publications information page from Academic OneFile for a trade publication called RV Business.  The page indicates that full text for RV Business is available from October 7, 1991 through July 1, 2011.  If RV Business is still in publication, Academic OneFile doesn't have permission from the publisher to make more current issues searchable or to provide the full text for any article more recent than July 1, 2011.