Professor requested "Anatomy of a Scholarly Article." Two article, one from a humanities journal, one from a science journal, have been selected and sent to the students, though professor believes that many students will not look at them in advance. Students will have their computers.
Goals: become familiar with scholarly articles; be able to describe characteristics of a scholarly article.
Opening question: how are scholarly articles different from magazine articles? What do you expect will be included in a scholarly article? Write ideas on board or in a Word document.
Have students open the two articles and look (3-5 minutes), in groups if possible.
Start with science article. Find journal title and issue number. Explain how journals are published.
Find author names. Talk about authority.
Point out keywords as useful to further research.
Abstract: highly organized, gives us both the question and the answer up front.
Sections clearly marked. It's okay to skip around when you're first considering an article.
End of article: funding statement, long list of sources. Talk about different citation styles.
2nd article: we're given fewer signposts to help us along. But many of the same features can be found in both articles.
Author: no affiliation given. How do we find out who he is?
Thesis: At the end of the first paragraph, then developed further later on.
How to read: Find a thesis. Look at headings. Read the conclusion.
Last: show items on article item page in OneSearch.
