Scholarly sources are different from news sources because rather than reporting an event, scholarly sources ask and answer questions through some form of analysis. Scholarly sources are written by experts-- people who know a lot about their subject like professors-- and they also refer to other sources in a works cited/references list to show where their information came from originally.
Professional researchers create scholarly sources to share new ideas, findings, and questions with other experts in their field. It is natural to find scholarly sources challenging to read, but engaging with these sources is a critical part of college-level learning. Reading and using scholarly sources helps us become familiar with the research methods and language used in the majors we study and increases our capacity to address complex problems.
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