Educational Studies

When you look at the 3 articles under the Test your knowledge tab, ask yourself the following questions before making your decision

Authors:

• Are the authors’ names given? 
  • Scholarly articles are NEVER anonymous.
• Does it indicate on the first or last page of the article where at least one of the authors does his/her research?
  • Almost all scholarly articles are written by people doing research at a university or other research organization. Their “affiliation” will be listed in the article.

Content:

• Is there a short summary (called an abstract) at the beginning of the article?
  • Almost all scholarly articles will have an abstract which summarizes the key points of the article.
• Who is it written for? People who are already familiar with this subject? Is the language difficult to understand?
  • Scholarly articles are written by experts for other experts. Authors assume  that you are familiar with the vocabulary used by people doing research in this area. This means that the articles can be difficult to read if you are new to the topic.
• Are there tables and charts? [Common but not essential]
• Original research articles will have a detailed methodology section and will often display findings in tables and charts.
  • Articles that summarize research done by other people (literature reviews) or theoretical articles may not have these.

​​Citations:

• Are there a lot of in-text citations to scholarly sources in the article?
  • ALL scholarly articles will include MANY in-text citations (or footnotes/endnotes) where the authors give credit to the source of an idea. Usually this in-text citation only lists the author’s last name(s), year of publication, and (if it’s a direct quotation) a page number.
  • This is essential in scholarly writing. When you take an idea from  someone else – even if you put it into your own words – you MUST cite it. If you don’t, you are plagiarizing. This is a serious academic offence.

• Is there a long list of references (or Works Cited) at the end of the article?
  • You will always find a long list of references at the end of a scholarly article which provide all the citation details that you would need in order to find the exact source that the author used.
  • Note: if the author is using footnotes, they may put the full citation in the footnote, and not need to have a list of references at the end.

Length:

• How many pages long is the article? 
  • Scholarly articles tend to be quite long. They will almost never be less than 5-pages long.