Answer
A practitioner journal primarily features content written by people who work (practice) in the field rather than articles written by those who work in academic institutions like a university or college. "Trade publications" and "practitioner sources" are often used interchangeably. Many databases offer settings/limiters to narrow results to those from trade publications.
Let's take a practical example. ProQuest Central, a widely-used, general database, provides a trade publication limiter on its results pages. From any results page in ProQuest Central, you can find the 'Source Type' heading on the left margin and click 'Trade Journals'. Note: You may need to click the 'More >' link to see the Trade Journals option. This simple step will narrow all your ProQuest results to just those from trade journals/publications.
While many other databases have similar limiters, their titles and headings may vary. For instance, 'Content-Type' might be used instead of 'Source Type.' However, it's important to note that EagleSearch does not have a trade publication limiter. In this case, your best option is to utilize some of our individual databases from our Research Databases page, which offer more specific search capabilities.
For more information on some defining characteristics of trade publications, see our Understanding Journals: Peer-Reviewed, Scholarly, Trade & Popular guide.
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