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Later in the semester, you will be introduced to Dr. Peter Bushnell, a retired IUSB professor whose research on sharks was featured in Science magazine, a major publication. We will take a closer look at his article to note the parts of a scholarly article in the sciences.

Dr. Bushnell's article in Science
Dr. Bushnell’s article in Science

Note after the title where it reads Author Info & Affiliations. If you were to click on that link, it would tell you where each author worked. Why is knowing where the authors work important? It goes back to the concept of authority that we discussed in the beginning of the semester. It lets us know that the people making these claims are professional biologists.

Underneath the list of authors is the article abstract. Abstracts provide a brief overview of the articles content and can help you decide if you want to read the full article. It is always a good idea to read the article abstract.

 

Screenshot of graph in article
Screenshot of graph in article

Make note of the graph. Why are graphs and charts important? Because they are a visual representation of the data or summaries of raw data.  When you look at these in articles in your own future research, be sure to pay attention to the source citations, units of measure or sample sizes, or time period covered.

 

Screenshot of list of article references.
List of article references (works cited)

Now let’s look at the list of references. I would recommend looking at the full list from the link if you can, instead of the above screenshot in order to get the full scope of the research. The list of references can be useful for finding additional sources for your own research. Note also the long range of scholarly conversation within this article: the oldest article cited is from 1948 and the most recent is 2015. That is nearly 70 years worth of scholarship.

 

Screenshot of article acknowledgments
Screenshot of article acknowledgments

Finally, the last thing we’ll look at here is the acknowledgments, where the authors thank people who assisted with research and agencies that provided financial support. Knowing who is funding the research can be useful for noting any potential bias. For example, in 2021, e-cigarette maker Juul Labs funded a special issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior on Juul, which prompted three of their editorial board members to resign. While these articles did follow the peer review process, the sponsorship of the research by the company did give some researchers pause.

Sciences and Social Sciences

Science and Social Science articles will typically have an introduction—which includes the thesis and goals of the research, as well as a literature review describing previous work on the topic, a method section, which describes how the data was gathered; a results section that describes the results, and finally a discussion section (sometimes called Conclusion) which analyzes the results and provides suggestions for future research.

Humanities

Articles in the humanities tend to differ from articles in the sciences and social sciences in that there is not an experiment or qualitative/quantitative study involved. The Stanford Humanities Center described it as “the human experience cannot be adequately captured by facts and figures alone, humanities research employs methods that are historical, interpretive and analytical in nature. Professors who engage in humanities research are often posing questions about common assumptions, uncovering new meanings in artistic works, or finding new ways to understand cultural interactions.” Here is an example of an article in the humanities. Compare it to Dr. Bushnell’s article and note the differences.

Altmetrics

Sometimes scholarly research catches the imagination of the public and begins getting covered by the popular media. This happened with Dr. Bushnell’s article in Science. If we go back to his article and click on the metrics link, there is something called Altmetrics. This examines how much coverage the study is getting on social media and popular news outlets. If we click on the 191 news outlets we can scroll through a list of organizations. We can also view how many times it has been blogged about or shared on social media. As you can see, this study is in the top 5 percent of academic articles being discussed in popular forums. Let’s take a closer look at some of this coverage:

Screenshot of altmetrics for Bushnell article
Screenshot of altmetrics for Bushnell article

This article from the Washington Post by Rachel Feltman concisely summarizes the research and provides an eye-catching headline, much different than the title in the original study. It is geared toward introducing the general public to the idea that these sharks live for so long. Finally, blogs are another place where research can be discussed. Dr. Bushnell’s article caught the attention of shark enthusiasts such as Jerry Coyne and Christopher Bird. A couple of things to keep in mind when looking at blogs: look for an “about the author” page, which provides some credentials or motivations for the blog. And do not just rely on their own self-written bio. Do a lateral search and confirm those credentials. In Dr. Coyne’s bio he writes that he is a professor at the University of Chicago. A separate search confirmed this to be true.

Update on the Greenland Shark Research

Please read this story from the giving an update on the Greenland Shark research (you will need to login if you are off campus).

Two things to keep in mind from this article:

1. The ongoing nature of scientific inquiry–research continues to evolve and change as further study is conducted.

2. Note the researchers exasperation with how the age of the sharks was covered in the media. It highlights the idea that sometimes the ways that complex research gets filtered down to the public can lead to oversimplifications.

Not everything in a Scholarly Journal is an Article

Academic journals contain more than just scholarly articles. Below are a few examples of other kinds of resources you may find. You can click on the links to view each type of source.

Column/Editorial: these provide an expert’s opinion on an issue of current debate within the field. These are usually short and written in the first person. Sometimes there will be a list of works cited. Often (but not always) it will be labelled as an editorial under the title.

Commentary: these give an alternate take on a recently published article. These often cite sources and have a works cited. Often short, commentaries will also refer to the piece being commented on in the abstract and within the article.

Literature Review: Provides an overview of the recent literature published on a topic. Can sometimes look like a journal article. These can be useful as it gives you a lot of resources on a topic which can then be reviewed.

Book Review: reviews a recent work of interest in the field. These tend to be very short and have the book’s citation information at the top of the work.

Sources

“Parts of a Scholarly Journal” by IU South Bend Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Flores, Alicia. “Professor Peter Bushnell’s work on Greenland sharks makes cover of Science.” The Preface. 5 September 2016.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Navigating Information Literacy Copyright © by Julie Feighery is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.