Critical Reading Strategies for Scholarly Sources
Scholarly sources are "peer-reviewed" essays and articles that use new research findings and theoretical tools to contribute to ongoing conversations within and across various disciplines. As a result, they can sometimes be difficult since they tend to draw on relatively specialized vocabularies. But they also pack a lot of thinking, insight, and research into a relatively small package.
Many books are also considered scholarly, though they typically do not go through the same peer review process as journals. These are published by university or academic "trade" publishers.
Often, the difference between scholarly publications and other types of secondary sources (magazines, newspapers, etc.) is that the former contain extensive footnotes and/or endnotes that document how and why the author makes the claims that s/he does -- and what the limits of those claims are. While both types of publications tend to present you with lots of interesting (or uninteresting) information, only scholarly publications let you in on the secret of how that information was created by revealing the disagreements among "experts" as they research similar questions. This advantage of reading scholarly publications is that they allow you to enter into the creative process of knowledge making by treating you as a fellow researcher who may want to extend, modify, and/or criticize the claims made in what you are reading.
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As you read (and reread) your scholarly sources, try to answer the following questions. 1) What problem/question is the author posing? Who else seems to be engaged in the conversation about this problem/question? (Be specific.) How does that problem/question relate to and/or differ from the problem you're posing in your research project? (Remember that a problem is not a thesis or conclusion. Those come later.) 2) What kind of knowledge, methods, and archives does the author use in order to address that problem/question? Are there other kinds of knowledge, methods, and archives that you think might be helpful, but that they author does not draw on? 3) What is the author's argument? How do you assess it? (Are you persuaded by/satisfied with the author's argument?) How is that argument shaped by the evidence and methods the author uses (and doesn't use)? 4) How might other scholars assess this article? |
About scholarly sources
"For an activity to be designated as scholarship, it should manifest at least three key characteristics: it should be public, susceptible to critical review and evaluation, and accessible for exchange and use by other members of one's scholarly community. We thus observe with respect to all forms of scholarship that they are acts of mind or spirit that have been made public in some manner, have been subjected to peer review by members of one's intellectual or professional community, and can be cited, refuted, built-upon, and shared among members of that community. Scholarship properly communicated and critiqued serves as the building block for knowledge growth in a field."From: Shulman, Lee. The Carnegie Teaching Academy. (1998). The Pew Scholars National Fellowship Program (pp 9-10). Menlo Park, CA: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
- Scholarly sources typically include extensive documentation, bibliographies, and/or footnotes which position the research within an ongoing scholarly conversation.
- Articles are written by a scholar, professional researcher or expert in the field. The author's credentials and previous research publications are often given in/with the article.
- The language of scholarly sources is typically that of the discipline covered.
- Scholarly sources usually assume that the reader has some prior knowledge of the topic or problem. The audience is typically scholars, academic and non-academic researchers, professors, teachers, and students engaged a specific conversation about a specialized topic area, question, and/or problem.
- The main purpose of a scholarly source is to report on original research or experimental findings in order to make such information available to the rest of the scholarly world, and to shift and/or push forward one or more specific scholarly conversations. The specific and seemingly narrow focus is defined by the purpose of the publication and/or the problem/question being pursued. (This narrow research is frequently presented as a part of a much larger and more general conversation.)
- Many scholarly journals, though by no means all, are published by a specific professional organization or university.
- Many scholarly journals
are "peer reviewed" or "refereed".
To be accepted for publication in a given journal the author of an article
must submit his or her article to be reviewed, usually anonymously, by a panel
of experts who are involved directly or indirectly in related fields of inquiry.
- Ulrich's
Periodical Directory UW
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Use this database to see if a journal as a whole is considered scholarly or peer reviewed/refereed. Remember that not all articles in a scholarly journal
are themselves scholarly - you'll also find book reviews, editorials, reviews of the literature, etc.
- Ulrich's
Periodical Directory UW
restricted
Many thanks to Bruce Burgett for his contributions to this guide.
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