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Class objectives

In this class, you will learn how to effectively analyze academic publications.

This in-class activity is crafted to deepen your understanding of such scholarly academic articles, which will also serve as preparation for your upcoming Science Assignment for GNED 1101. During this session, you'll explore the characteristics of a sample source and discuss strategies for assessing source quality.

By the end of this class, you will...

  1. Be able to define both "academic sources" and "peer review."
  2. Have researched the structure and components of a sample academic article.
  3. Have investigated an academic publication.

Science assignment summary

  • Assignment Title: Evaluation of a Scholarly Article
  • Due Date: Feb 23, 2025
  • Weight: 15% of the course grade
  • Task: Independently evaluate a provided scholarly article based on specific questions.
  • Key Questions:
    • Identify the first and last authors, and discuss their roles.
    • State the year, journal, and volume of publication.
    • Identify the purpose of the article (inform, persuade, or prove).
    • Determine the type of publication and explain the impact factor.
    • Assess the article’s organization and format.
    • Evaluate the reference list, focusing on the age of sources and the presence of primary or secondary references.
    • Analyze a figure from the article, discussing its clarity and how data is represented.
    • Summarize key study elements, including the hypothesis, methods, and conclusion.
    • Identify potential biases and summarize the conclusions in relation to the hypothesis.

Overview: Scholarly sources

Scholarly sources typically have a few characteristics

  • They are peer-reviewed. (Peer review is a publication process)
  • They are published in scholarly peer-reviewed journals.
  • They are written for an academic audience and use technical language.
  • In the sciences and social sciences, they often follow a predictable format.
    • Abstract, introduction/literature review, methods, results, discussion/conclusion
  • They are generally written by researchers in universities or by professionals (other experts) in a given field.
  • They should include references from other academic sources.
  • They should have a digital object identifier (DOI). This is usually located on the first page of the article (near the top or bottom)

"In the actual functioning of science, a set of procedures whereby one's colleagues in a scientific field evaluate one's contribution in that field. In this sense, peer review is used to determine the publishability of scientific papers, to evaluate research proposals, to assess grant applications, etc."

Source: Peer review. (2009). In A. S. Reber, R. Allen, & E. S. Reber, The Penguin dictionary of psychology (4th ed.). Penguin. Credo Reference: https://go.openathens.net/redirector/mtroyal.ca?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/penguinpsyc/peer_review/0?institutionId=2638

Primary research studies (i.e. single studies) Secondary research studies (i.e. review articles)

These will report on data gathered and analyzed as part of a single original experiment. There will be...

  • Peer-reviewed

  • A (relatively) predictable format

    • Abstract, introduction/literature, method, results, discussion/conclusion.

  • A hypothesis or research question (in the introduction)

  • A methods section in which the researchers describe how they have collected and analyzed data.

  • Quantitative and/or qualitative data that demonstrate the findings.

  • Conclusions about the experiment and its value to the scientific field.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

A review article will take a number of empirical articles, and perform some analysis.

  • These articles are peer-reviewed.
     
  • Do not follow a predictable format

Types

  • Literature Reviews give a broad overview of a given topic at a moment in time. 

  • Systematic Reviews are a rigorous review of primary research articles, with explicit inclusion criteria. They're often used in the Health Sciences to gauge the effectiveness of specific interventions. Systematic reviews will discuss their inclusion criteria, search methods, and occasionally their search statement in the article. 

  • Meta-Analyses are statistical syntheses of collected data, as part of a systematic review

Example of primary vs secondary scientific article: Drexler University

 

Activity: Evaluating scholarly sources

You are going to analyze an example article and publication in preparation for your class assignment. You can use any strategy you like to answer the following questions.

Step 1: Open the following sample article

Article: "The effects of long-term exposure to microgravity and body orientation relative to gravity on perceived travelled distance"

Step 2: In pairs or groups of three, find the answers to the following questions.

Use the Google Form to input your answers: https://forms.gle/J9NiXovvdm2JYex8A

In your duo or trio, dig a little deeper into this article and answer the following questions. 

Use the Google Form to input your answers: https://forms.gle/RCxyJ289uvpnxCKF8

Finding scholarly sources through the library

Trying searching the title of the article in LibrarySearch

Searching the MRU LibrarySearch Part 1

Librarian

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Erik Christiansen

Contact:
Email: echristiansen@mtroyal.ca
Phone: 403.440.5168
Office: EL4423C
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