UGS 303: The Applied Humanities / Lushkov

Who writes these articles?

Experts in their fields. For your purposes in this assignment, you should think mostly of folks that work in academia - university professors. It's worthwhile to ponder who in your field would work outside of academia in a professional context. Perhaps in government or in policymaking?

Why do they write in these journals and not in magazines or newspapers or in books?

The most rigorous research happens in these journals. Publishing in these journals assures that your research will be read and cited by experts within your field of study. This research is the most up to date - once research is published here, it can be referenced for a general audience in newspapers or magazines, or it may be referenced in a more comprehensive work, such as a book. Having an article published in a journal is prestigious and may be a factor in getting and keeping one's job at a university. No, authors do not get paid by these publications. 

How do I access these journals?

These journals are very expensive to subscribe to. This university provides access to many, and will borrow from other libraries on your behalf so you have virtually complete access to scholarship. You can search within the databases I recommend and Google Scholar (but use the link to GS that I provide since it links with our subscriptions). 

Wait, are books scholarly?

In most cases, look for books that are authored by an academic and/or published by an academic press (often, but not always, affiliated with a university), meant for an audience of serious researchers in the field. Academic books don't always go through the same peer review process as articles, but it is an equally rigorous process. 

It's also possible that a scholar or expert will write a more popular-leaning book, meant to be read by a non-academic audience and published on a non-academic press. Judge these sources on an individual basis. 

Here is the first page of an article from a journal of economic history.

The abstract is a brief summary of the article, usually written in language for a non-expert audience, that lays out the authors argument and the evidence they use to back up their claims. In this case, the author mentions using data on job availability and hiring practices in cities and states.

The introduction will give the reader an idea of the current state of the research question. What have other scholars said about the topic? From there, the author will let the reader know where they concur and differ - what new direction they wish to take the topic in. 

In the conclusion, the author reiterates their claim(s). Typically, you will see the author explicitly stating what they argued and how what they argued is new and meaningful (impactful) in the field.

In the references (works cited, bibliography), you will see that most scholarly articles have long lists of citations. It takes a full consideration of evidence in the field to make convincing arguments among experts in a discipline. In this case, you see the author cites a lot of scholarship and perhaps a couple primary sources - documents written at the time of the event (in this case, during a wave of the Great Migration).

Scholarship that leans more towards the arts is argued somewhat differently. Here is an example from an article about the poet Walt Whitman. This is a screenshot of the third page of the article. There is no abstract and the 'introduction' is several writing excerpts with analysis. It's not until this third page that the author lets the reader know what he is arguing. I have also highlighted some of the evidence they are using, including historical statistics and analysis of primary sources (writing from the time being discussed).

What does it look like when authors use primary sources as evidence? In this same article, the author went to the Ransom Center here on the UT Campus and analyzed an artifact. He explains how seeing the artifact is very different than seeing the transcript of the artifact. In the references, you can see that the author is primarily concerned with primary sources (historical documents), but also uses some scholarship.