A tutorial describing how to read a scholarly article. Brought to you by Western Libraries. Please contact Research Help http://www.lib.uwo.ca/services/resear... for more assistance. How to Read a Scholarly Article by Western Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...What is a Scholarly Journal Article? Chances are youll need to find a scholarly journal article for a research paper or project in the near future. But, wait, what is a scholarly journal article? How is it different from a popular source like a newspaper or magazine article? Lets reduce the confusion on scholarly journal articles. Scholarly journals enable scholars -- experts in a particular academic field -- to communicate their research with other experts in that field through publishing articles and to stay current by reading about other scholars work. Consequently, scholarly journals create a community of scholars who are all participating in a kind of conversation in that academic field. Rather than a face-to-face conversation, this is a formal conversation, which takes place over months and years through written documents. The most important part of this long term written conversation - what makes it a scholarly conversation, as opposed to popular - is whats called the peer review process. The peer review process works like this: in order for a scholar to get published in a scholarly journal, his or her expert peers must read their work and critique it. These peer reviewers make sure that the scholar has cited the appropriate experts in the discipline, made valid and well-supported arguments, and has written the article on a topic that is appropriate for that particular journal. This rigorous evaluation process ensures that scholarly work meets a higher standard than popular publications. So, why is this important for you? First, the information in a scholarly text has been rigorously evaluated, so it is more reliable and credible than information in popular sources. Second, reading scholarly journal articles for your papers or projects can give you insight into the ways of thinking of experts in that field. Finally, every scholarly text has extensive bibliographies that introduce you to important texts in the field, which can help you extend your research in that area. When you read the articles and books the scholar cited in her article, you are taking part in the scholarly conversation. Okay, so, brass tacks: lets say you are in a research database and you only want scholarly articles. How do you do it? In EBSCOs Academic Search Complete, a common research database, you check the box for Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals before clicking the search button. Thats it. Now, all of your results will be scholarly articles. For more information, check out the How Do I...? section of the Libraries Web site or contact a UW Librarian by clicking the Ask Us link on any Libraries Web page.A tutorial describing how to read a scholarly article. Brought to you by Western Libraries. Please contact Research Help http://www.lib.uwo.ca/services/resear... for more assistance. How to Read a Scholarly Article by Western Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...Recognize the structure of scholarly articles in order to use them most effectively in your research projects.

• published: 25 Jan 2014
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