The term "professional publication" typically refers to trade publications. These differ from scholarly publications in a few ways.
Professional publications exhibit several characteristics:
- They are not peer-reviewed but they are edited by experts.
- They are sometimes written by scholars but most frequently they are written by professionals working directly in the field and not in academia.
- They are written for working professionals in the field.
- They usually contain a small number of cited research for their articles, particularly compared with academic journal articles.
For more comparisons, see our Distinguishing Scholarly from Popular Journals chart.
EBSCOhost is a company that owns and manages a wide variety of databases. Many of our databases are owned and run by EBSCOhost (though some are not). Yes, some EBSCOhost databases contain articles from professional or trade publications, but many of our trade/professional publications, like OT Practice, are only available in print.
