Forgiveness and Revenge: Home

Key Characteristics of a Scholarly Article

• Author(s): scholars/researchers with credentials (e.g. PhD) and/or affiliations (e.g. university professor or similar knowledge-based organizations.)
• (the intended) Audience: for their academic peers in the discipline/field.
• Purpose: to further our understanding about a topic with original research, usually focusing in a narrow area of the subject (rather than to merely persuade, entertain, inform, or report.)
• Peer-reviewed scholarly articles are vetted and improved by experts in the field before publication.
•  Language: scholarly language with discipline specific vocabulary.
• Structure: Relatively lengthy (at least 5 pages of text) with many citations and references to published research (footnotes and/or bibliography).

A systematic approach in your reading helps you consider the article critically. A good critique is really more about your own confidence as a reader than about possession of specific knowledge.

How to Read Journal Articles Like a Professor by Michael J. Nelson.