These tools are "general" in the sense that provide coverage of a broad range of periodicals (academic journals, news and trade magazines, newspapers, etc.), with no focus on any particular subject area or discipline.

These databases often are great places to begin research.

To see the list of these "general" databases,

• choose the Library Resources / Databases option in the column on the left side of any W&L University Library Web page;
• then click on General (any topic) at the top of the list of subjects.

 If you need to determine whether or not a given periodical (journal or magazine) is a "scholarly" or "academic" resource, you can search for information on that periodical in the Ulrichsweb directory.

Here, Content Type may be described as "Academic / Scholarly" and the status of the journal as "Refereed" (or peer-reviewed) may be indicated by this charming icon:
 

A journal's policies on article submissions and publication usually are available in each issue -- as in this example -- but this information may be hard to find when you use an article in online form.