SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION AS A CONVERSATION

Scholarly communication is defined by the Association of College & Research Libraries (2020) as

the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs. (What is Scholarly Communication? section)

It is also a conversation between the creators of this information, who have a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, and who use a variety of methods to share their ideas. These individuals write about, present, publish, and post their ideas with the intent that others will use the information to push the conversation to the next level, and even start new conversations. For example, there are a host of articles, websites, and books on climate change and pollution. There is also literature on how the auto industry is responding to changing emission standards, including the technology in electric vehicles. A researcher watching these conversations unfold might begin a new conversation connecting the two: a discussion of the role technology can play in reducing pollution — this may include improved electric cars or genetically modified plants that absorb more CO2.

All of this communication takes place in a variety of resource formats — as we discussed in Chapter 2 — and all have value and contribute to scholarly communication. A single scholarly work may not represent the only perspective, or even the majority perspective on an issue. Consider that scholarship on a topic will grow and evolve over time. New information will be discovered which may support or contradict previous information. This new information will be discussed and debated, along with new interpretations and new theories that develop over time. Good scholars will make an effort to document previous work on the topic that informs their own studies. College students are expected to follow this practice as well, by citing the work they use in research papers and projects, and positioning their ideas within the larger conversation about this topic.

This process of positioning one’s ideas within the larger conversation on a topic is called a review of the literature. Sometimes a literature review stands alone, and sometimes it is part of a larger research project, but in both cases its purpose is to investigate the context of the topic you are researching to better situate your research — your part of the conversation — within the larger conversation, and to support your conclusions. This includes finding out about the research already done on a topic, or existing knowledge, and finding gaps in the knowledge where further research is needed to fill out the bigger picture and add new information to the conversation.

One way to think of this conversation is as a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece depends on the ones around it for context, or meaning. If you look at one piece alone, the picture may not make sense or seem unimportant. It may be blurry, or some small bit of a larger thing that you can’t quite make sense of. Even if the image does make sense alone — a leaf, hot air balloon, or an eye — it may still hint at what surrounds it, or be missing a little bit. Only when you fit all the pieces together do you see the big picture, and understand the whole.

For example, this piece of a picture is clear enough. It’s a street-lamp style light, and some leaves. This could be a piece of a conversation about technology’s contribution to light pollution, for example. Sure, it stands alone, but it starts to make real sense when you see the whole picture all at once — now we know the context for our piece (see below):

In this case, the larger picture shows part of Weber State University’s Ogden campus. The larger conversation here — WSU — includes many smaller pieces that contribute to the whole. In addition to the lamp-post, other pieces of this conversation could include the clock tower and WSU’s history, the landscaping and WSU’s carbon-footprint reduction plan, WSU’s new science building, or WSU’s position in the region.

But where do you go to find out about the scholarly conversation in progress about a topic and get that big picture? When searching for information, where you look will depend partly on when it happened:

A news crew can film something happening live, send it back to the station, edit it, and broadcast it on the news in just a few hours. People can take pictures with cell phones and post them immediately on social media. For significant events, newspapers and magazines can arrange to cover the event in the next issue that will appear, usually within days.

Coverage of the event in scholarly journals will take longer because those sources are published less frequently. Coverage in these sources is typically more in-depth, and the time to study and research takes longer. These sources are often peer-reviewed, which adds even more time to the process.

Books and encyclopedias take even longer to write, edit, and publish. In general, the longer it takes for the source to appear, the more in-depth the coverage will be. Encyclopedias are probably the one exception; these typically provide general overviews and are meant only to introduce you to a topic.

The Web is unique in that it can be edited and/or revised hourly, but may also contain information from any point in time. Even if information was uploaded recently, it may be old information that reflects only what was known at the time of its creation. This is particularly true with some kinds of social media. For example, sometimes news posts shared on Facebook end up re-circulating long after the date they were originally posted because people note the headline and get worked up, then repost it without checking the date, or even the facts. It is important to verify information found on the Web with sources that have a clear creation date.

A SAMPLE SEARCH

If you have been assigned a research assignment about former President George H. W. Bush’s efforts to persuade the American public that the 1991 Gulf War was a worthwhile struggle, you might do some preliminary reading in the Encyclopedia Britannica and discover entries such as Iraq and the War of 1991, George Herbert Walker Bush, or Saddam Hussein. Additional background reading might be found doing a simple Google search for (“Gulf War” OR “Iraq War 1991”) AND “public relations.”

Once you are familiar with the topic and what went on during that time, you might search one of the library databases, such as Academic OneFile, Academic Search Ultimate, and JSTOR for full-text, peer-reviewed journal articles using a similar search statement. Or, you might search the library’s online catalog to find books on this topic using the search statement “Iraq War 1991” AND “mass media.” These sources will give you more in-depth coverage of the event. An academic video database like AVON might provide some in-depth documentaries with information on the topic from a variety of perspectives. For example, The Case Against Saddam Hussein documents a Dan Rather interview of Secretary of State Colin Powell, after Powell made a historic speech making the case against Saddam Hussein to an audience at the United Nations.

You could also do a YouTube search for “Desert Storm” AND “Gulf War 1991” to see primary (first-hand) videos of events during that time period, or search library newspapers from October 1990 to February 1991 for examples of new stories, ads, and editorials to determine the mood of US society at the time.

This provides a simple example of a few sources one might consult on a specific topic. All of these sources come from different time periods. They contain information from different perspectives and at different points in the timeline of information production. Understanding how they all fit together to form a complete picture will give you a much broader perspective than relying on a single source, even if it is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal article. It is important to remember that there are lots of conversations happening and not everyone agrees. All of the individual sources you find are just a small piece of the larger conversation. No one source will represent the only — or even the majority — perspective on a topic. A single source only represents the research and view of one author. You can’t read everything on a topic, but it is always a good idea to look at multiple sources from a variety of perspectives to get a better idea of the big picture.

SCIENCE = TRUTH?

Many equate scientific studies with truth. One of the hallmarks of high quality scientific research is the ability to replicate experiments. Dr. Brian Nosek at the University of Virginia led a project where researchers attempted to replicate one hundred psychology experiments published in three leading journals. The results of his study showed that nearly two thirds of the results of the experiments could not be replicated (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). According to Nosek^[1], “our best methodologies to try to figure out truth mostly reveal to us that figuring out truth is really hard. And we’re going to get contradictions. One year, we’re going to learn that coffee is good for us. The next year, we’re going to learn that it’s bad for us. The next year, we’re going to learn we don’t know” (Vedantam, 2015, para. 7).

When an experiment cannot be replicated, does that mean it’s wrong? Nosek said it’s possible that both studies are right, and that the inability to reproduce a study may be “a sign of uncertainty, not a sign of untrustworthiness… a signal there’s something going on that we don’t understand” (Vedantam, 2015, para. 8).

Vedantam (2015) believes that many “look to science to provide us with answers and certainty when science really is in the business of producing questions and producing more uncertainty” (para. 15). He talks about the equivalence between science and journalism: journalists

paint a picture of the world every day, whether that’s a war zone or financial markets. But we’re always doing it in the context of imperfect information. And especially when we’re covering things we don’t know much about – you know, a big breaking story, what we discover in the first few days is likely to get revised down the road. Now, you can throw up your hands and say, let’s not waste time reading or listening to the first draft of history. Let me just wait a month or a year for the whole picture to emerge. But I think most people would say the best information is still valuable, even if it’s going to get updated tomorrow. We need to think about scientific studies the same way. (para. 15)

Just like news stories develop over time, science changes too. Truth can change, as new information is learned — such truths are all pieces of larger conversations, and conversations build with each voice that contributes its discoveries. Anyone who has been on a road trip with a kid will tell you how boring an unchanging conversation can be (Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?). It’s up to everyone to add what they can to scholarly conversations to keep them from stagnating, and to keep progress — academic, scientific, technological, and artistic progress — moving, changing, and advancing.

FINDING IDEAS FOR TOPICS

Most of the time, you’ll be given a topic to write about. Other times, you’ll need to come up with your own idea, which can be the most challenging part of the research process. You can find ideas for topics in a number of places. Here’s a list to help you get started:

• Worried that your topic is too broad? Talk to a subject librarian if you need help narrowing it down.
• Textbooks are great for an overview of topics. If you are taking an interesting course, look in your textbook for topic ideas, or ask your professor.
• Reference books are good for identifying specific areas of a subject you might be interested in pursuing. Browse the reference area and look for encyclopedias or other reference sources that will give you background on a variety of topics.
• Magazines and newspapers are good sources for exploring current events issues.
• Journal articles are best for exploring more scholarly topics. Ask a librarian for recommendations.
• General or subject-specific article databases are great if you already have a topic in mind. Academic Search Ultimate is a good general database to start with if you aren’t sure where to look.
• There are several great databases for argumentative papers. CQ Researcher presents both sides of the story for controversial topics, and Opposing Viewpoints in Context allows you to browse specific kinds of information (e.g., academic journals, editorials, statistics, and magazines) on controversial topics.
• Google can help you narrow down a topic if you already have a general idea of what you want to research.
• Wikipedia can also be a good place for some background information on a topic, as well as possible keywords and phrases and search ideas. It should not be used as a source for a paper, but sometimes you see something about a topic that you didn’t know before and can find some good ideas for your paper.
• Don’t forget personal issues you are dealing with or things you are passionate about. This could be a pet, a hobby, or a problem you or a friend or family member is dealing with. Sometimes it is very personal, like single parenting, or a certain disease a loved one deals with. Think about questions you can ask about these things. For example, how did this hobby become a thing? Who started it? Is there some psychological benefit to owning a pet? What makes people mistreat pets? Are single parents treated equally in the workplace? What is the current state of research on this disease? Use these simple questions as a starting point to develop a focused research question or thesis statement that will work for the scope of the project you will be working on.

SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

Once you decide on an idea, it is important to think about the scope of the assignment or project you will be working on. The length of a paper is important to consider because that will give some indication of how many sources will be needed — and how broad or focused the topic should be. For example, are you working on a 4-page paper that discusses your personal views on a particular topic, or are you working on a 30-page scholarly literature review? Are you required to find a minimum of two sources of any kind, or are you required to find a minimum of 15 peer-reviewed articles on the topic? If your topic is too narrow, you won’t be able to find the required number of sources or have enough information to fill out the required length for the paper.

If you are required to use specific types (e.g., scholarly) or formats (e.g., books) of sources, then you can’t go with just any topic. For example, you may not be able to locate 15 peer-reviewed articles on hip-hop music or football. However, if you modify the topic to focus on the role that social class plays in hip-hop music or the issue of recurrent concussions in college football players, you will be able to locate academic journal articles or books. If you are required to use a minimum of two books for your paper, you won’t be able to find any on a topic that is too current, such as a presidential election that happened a month ago. However, if you revise your focus to a related issue, such as campaign financing or the merits of the electoral college, you’ll be able to locate books. The scope of your assignment or project will impact the types and formats of information you’ll be able to find, as well as how broad or narrow your topic will need to be. These are important to consider before you begin looking for information. But remember, it’s okay to go back and revise your topic if you find that you are having a hard time finding sources — it’s all part of the process. Just be sure to clear it with your professor.

FOCUSING THE TOPIC & FORMULATING A RESEARCH QUESTION OR THESIS STATEMENT

Most college level research papers will have either a research question or a thesis statement. Both identify the issue you will be writing about; one is phrased as a question and the other is phrased as a statement. Both should be focused to work with the scope of your project or assignment. There are many ways to focus a topic idea. You can focus a topic by geography, a specific population, or a particular time period. You don’t have to focus your topic in all these ways; these are just some possibilities:

Why is it important to focus a topic? If it’s too broad, you’ll be overwhelmed. For example, searching for sources on “education” would bring up an enormous amount of information, but focusing your search on “how school vouchers will hurt already economically strapped public schools” will provide a more manageable set of results. On the other hand, it is important that your topic is not too narrow, as you will have a hard time finding enough information (or the required type of information), and not have enough issues to develop effectively. In this situation, your paper may lack context and depth.

Following are some examples of research questions and thesis statements that are problematic, and some suggestions for fixing them:

SEARCH TECHNIQUES

Search techniques are the methods you use to search for information on your topic, and allow you to turn your research question or thesis statement into a search statement. This section covers different techniques that are used to formulate effective searches: keywords/synonyms, Boolean operators, phrase searching, and truncation. These techniques are combined to formulate search statements, which are used in various search tools (e.g., library catalogs, article databases, Google and Google Scholar). An additional technique covered later in the textbook involves using the limiters (sometimes called facets) available in the search tools you are using.

KEYWORDS & SYNONYMS

Keywords are the main ideas in your research question or thesis statement, and these are the words that you will use to search for information on your topic. Sometimes an idea will include more than one word to describe the concept, and in this case, you’ll have a phrase. Examples of phrases are concepts like “global warming,” “stem cell,” or “gun control.” Different authors may use different terms to describe the same concept — but you don’t want to miss their articles just because they use a different word. That’s why synonyms are important when you think about searching for information. For example, a synonym for “cat” is “feline.”

Let’s take the question: How has the Internet influenced students’ learning styles?

• There are three main concepts in the question: Internet, students, and learning styles.
• Internet and students are both keywords.
• “Learning styles” is a phrase, because this concept has more than one word. When you use a phrase in a search statement, you will use quotation marks around the phrase.
• Synonyms for the keyword Internet are Web, online, WWW, or World Wide Web. Depending on how much information you find, you could also use additional terms for things one might spend time doing on the internet, like social media or YouTube.
• Synonyms for the keyword students include learners, pupils, or scholars. In this case, it is important to consider the time period when these words would have been used most frequently. Pupils, for example, may not be used very often in modern research about students, so a search with this might retrieve old results, or even medical research, since pupil is a part of the anatomy of the eye. Instead, consider students from another perspective: what kind of students? The term undergraduate could be used to investigate higher education learning styles, while K-12 or high school could be used for learning styles in primary education.
• Synonyms for the phrase learning styles might be hard to think of, but consider that you might want to focus on learning styles as a whole, but another researcher might have focused on just one or two learning styles. For this reason, it is important to write down not only the actual words in the question or thesis, but alternate terms as well — in this case, terms such as auditory, visual, tactile, or kinetic would be good.

Here’s another example. All of the main concepts are highlighted in yellow:

How might education in correctional facilities play a role in reducing recidivism?

PHRASE SEARCHING

Phrase searching occurs by placing quotation marks around multiple words or phrases, the database looks only for the phrase and not for the words separately. By using quotation marks, you are telling the computer to only bring back results containing the exact terms you entered, in the exact order you typed them, such as in these examples:

“school vouchers”

“charter schools”

“academic achievement”

“school prayer”

Let’s take a look at our previous example:

How might education in correctional facilities play a role in reducing recidivism?

The term “correctional facilities” is a phrase and should be written in quotation marks when doing a search so the database searches for the terms together instead of separately. For example, by putting this phrase in quotes, you’ll avoid mismatched results about correctional techniques in horse training, or staffing problems in health facilities, and instead retrieve only results that specifically include something about correctional facilities. Another phrase for this example would be the synonym for recidivism: “repeat offense.”

Note: Phrases should be kept short, only 2-3 words in length. The longer the phrase, the less likely you are to find that exact phrase in your search. For example, you wouldn’t use “education in correctional facilities” or “role in reducing recidivism” in a search.

TRUNCATION

To truncate means to “chop off.” For example, think about the trunk of a tree – you could chop off all the branches and still be left with the trunk — the base of the tree. When you truncate a word, you chop off the end, so the search tool can search for multiple endings – or branches that extend from the base. When you truncate, you chop off the end of a word so the computer can search for multiple endings. Here’s an example of how truncation works in a database:

• You search for the word advertisement and retrieve 23 results. All of these have the word advertisement in them.
• You truncate the term like this: advertis* You retrieve 850 results showing variants after the ‘s’, such as
  • advertisE
  • advertisED
  • advertisER
  • advertisES
  • advertisING
  • advertisEMENT
  • advertisEMENTS

Truncation is a great way to broaden your search and pick up more results, but there are a few things that are important to remember when using truncation:

• Different databases use different truncation symbols. Most use an asterisk (*), but a few use exclamation points, question marks, and dollar signs. Use the database help screens to determine which symbols are appropriate. * ! ? $
• Truncation only picks up word ENDINGS, not synonyms. For example, truncating after the ‘n’ in science (scien*) will find science, sciences, and scientific, but it will NOT find the words biology, chemistry, or astronomy.
• Be careful where you place the truncation symbol. You don’t want to over truncate (or cut too much) and you also don’t want to under truncate (cut too little). For example, when we do a search for the topic computers, we want to truncate to search for terms related to computers:

BOOLEAN OPERATORS

There are a number of Boolean operators. The ones we will focus on in this course are AND and OR. It is a good idea to always capitalize Boolean operators when you use them in a search because some databases require it.

One of the less common Boolean operators is NOT, which is not generally used, even by advanced searchers, because it can inadvertently eliminate useful sources from a search’s results. For that reason, this course will focus on AND and OR. However, we will provide a brief overview of NOT here.

As you might have guessed, the NOT operator eliminates all results that include the term you specify. For example, if you do a search for information about roadrunners, the species of bird, you may end up with articles that also talk about Roadrunner, the cartoon character. You could potentially get around this by searching for roadrunner NOT cartoon, or roadrunner NOT Wile E. Coyote. However, a better way to find the information you need could be a search for the scientific name, Geococcyx californianus; or you could include additional terms such as habitat, diet, predators, etc. The NOT might help, but it is usually possible to achieve similar results using other search techniques. Here are some other examples:

lions AND diet NOT zoo* — if you want to learn about what lions eat in the wild. Note that this would exclude any article that compared the diets of zoo lions to wild lions, which could be useful.

“peanut butter” AND sandwich NOT jelly — if you’d like to find out what types of sandwiches are out there that use peanut butter other than PB&J. Note again that this would exclude a list of sandwich recipes if it included jelly in even one.

“traumatic brain injury” NOT football — if you want to learn about TBI that is caused by other things. Once again, note that any article that included football as a cause in addition to other causes would be eliminated.

AND connects all of the main concepts together, and tells the computer you want ALL of the words in your search results. This narrows your search, giving you FEWER results. Usually we think of AND as getting more, not less. For Thanksgiving dinner, you want pumpkin pie AND the apple pie; in this example, you get more with AND. In a database, however, AND does the opposite, like if you walk into an ice cream shop and ask for ice cream, they give you 32 scoops. That’s too much, so you won’t have room for pie. So you ask to only give you a scoop if it has chocolate: there are ten different flavors with chocolate, so now you are down to ten scoops — still too much. So then you ask to give you a scoop if it has chocolate AND caramel because you have to have both. Now you have two scoops — and room for pie.

Here’s how that would look as a search:

“ice cream” = 32 scoops
“ice cream” AND chocolate = 10 scoops
“ice cream” AND chocolate AND caramel = 2 scoops

Another Example:

“peanut butter” AND jelly AND sandwich

If you connect these terms with AND, you will only get peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You will NOT get sandwiches with jelly only, sandwiches with just peanut butter, or peanut butter and jelly on crackers.

All three of those terms MUST be present, and you only get one kind of sandwich.

OR broadens your search, giving you MORE results. Using OR tells the database to find ANY of the terms where each word may appear separately, as well as where any terms may appear together. Note: You MUST use parentheses around OR terms.

Example:

(“peanut butter” OR jelly) AND sandwich

If you connect the first two terms with OR, you will get peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sandwiches with jelly only, or sandwiches with just peanut butter. You still won’t get crackers, but you’ll get different kinds of sandwiches.

Peanut butter can be present, jelly can be present, or both of them can be present. Instead of only one kind of sandwich, you now have three different options. Keep in mind you may also end up with jelly-and-cream cheese sandwiches, or peanut butter and banana. They’ll still include your search term, but they may not be quite what you were thinking of… of course, it could give you useful information you hadn’t thought of before.

Another Example:

(“peanut butter” OR jelly OR sandwich)

If you connect all of the terms with OR, you’ll probably get a lot more than you want. Not only will you get peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sandwiches with jelly only, or sandwiches with just peanut butter, but you’ll also get ham and cheese sandwiches, sandwiches with roast beef and onions, or pretty much any sandwich you can think of. You may also get how to make jelly, or peanut butter allergies. Here you are telling the database to search for anything with any one of those terms in it.

CREATING SEARCH STATEMENTS

Search statements are what you type into a search box to find information on your topic. You combine all of the search techniques covered above in this chapter (keywords and synonyms, truncation, phrase searching, and Boolean operators) to create search statements. Let’s take a look at our previous example and go through the process step-by-step to create search statements:

Research question: How might education in correctional facilities play a role in reducing recidivism?

1. Choose keywords (main concepts): education, correctional facilities, recidivism
2. List all synonyms for these keywords:
   1. education
      schooling
      instruction
      learning
      tutoring
   2. correctional facilities
      jail
      prison
      penitentiary
      incarceration
   3. recidivism
      reoffending
      reoffence
      repeat offense
      repeat offenders
3. Truncate terms to pick up variant endings:
   1. educat*
      school*
      instruct*
      learn*
      tutor*
   2. correctional facilit*
      jail*
      prison*
      penitentiar*
      incarcerat*
   3. recidivis*
      reoffen*
      reoffence
      repeat offense*
      repeat offend*
4. Put quotation marks around phrases (concepts that are two words or more)
5. Combine search techniques to create search statements. Any research question or thesis statement can have many possible search statements, and it’s a good idea to try more than one — you never know who may have answers to your questions but be using different vocabulary combinations. These are just a few examples:

SEARCH STATEMENTS VS NATURAL LANGUAGE QUERIES

If you use Google to search for information, you probably know that it is easy to simply type in your whole question to find information. This is called a natural language query; it means putting things into the search box in your own words, without any special symbols or format — as if you were talking to someone. While this works pretty well in Google, it does not work as well (or at all) in most of the library’s subscription databases. For example, if you wanted to find out how high the Empire State Building was using a natural language search, you might type in How high is the Empire State Building? If you are using a keyword-based search in a database, you would probably type in the search statement “Empire State Building” AND height.