The overall appearance of a scholarly journal will be serious, somber, with few bright colors and headlines.

 The name of a scholarly journal may include the terms journal, proceedings, transactions, research. There are exceptions (like Earth Island Journal).

A scholarly journal is usually published by an academic institution or society.

An editorial board decides if a submitted article is worthy of being published in their scholarly journal. The names of the editorial board members are typically printed on the inside cover or title page of the journal.

Scholarly journals are peer-reviewed. This means that the editor(s) of the journal send the article to several experts, usually between 2 and 4, in the field. These experts read the article and recommend changes or revisions to it and whether or not it should be published. These reviewers can remain anonymous if they wish. Sometimes it is the policy of the journal to strip out the name of the author(s) of the article before sending it to reviewers as well. This is rather foolish (in my opinion), because academic circles are small communities and you can generally figure out who the authors/reviewers are (handwriting is a telltale sign).

Articles in scholarly journals are always attributed to their author(s) when published. These authors are usually experts in their field. The affiliation, email address, and sometimes the credentials of the author(s) are listed.

Scholarly journals usually tell when the article was submitted to it by the authors and when it was accepted.

Articles in scholarly journals always have an extensive bibliography of works cited.

The main purpose of a scholarly journal is to disseminate original research on topics in a specific field. Thus, the Journal of Paleontology publishes original articles on paleontological research.

Most articles in a scholarly journal have an Abstract at the beginning, which is a short summary of the article. This abstract is often cataloged in search engines like Biological Abstracts and GeoRef.

Scholarly journals are often published monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, or annually; usually, they are not weekly (Science and Nature are notable exceptions).

There are few to no advertisements in scholarly journals.

The vocabulary and writing style in a scholarly journal is typically technical and at a high level.

Generally, you must use a specialized index to find scholarly journal articles.

There are typically few pictures, many graphs and charts, and mostly text in scholarly journal articles.

There are few to no quotes or interviews in a scholarly journal article.

Scholarly journals are typically housed only in university libraries, libraries of research institutions like Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and museum libraries.