scholarly article review

scholarly article review

The Importance of Scholarly Article Reviews

1. Introduction

A scholarly article review is a critique that summarizes the research of others. This review will help you learn more about how to write one and why it’s so important. Requirements are at the bottom of this sheet. An article review is a piece of writing where you summarize and assess someone else’s article. The goal of writing an article review is to help you understand the article and see if you can apply some of what you’ve learned about writing a summary and evaluation of the article. Every article must include an executive summary. The main components of an executive summary include a description of the article, an abstract, and an evaluation. The purpose of an article review is to provide the academic community with a description, summary, and evaluation of the completed work. For the review to be successful, you must first read and understand the article. Reading the article is crucial to understanding the work and its elements. It can be very helpful to make a quick list or to jot down notes as you read the article. The notes can be used as a reference when you come to write your review.

2. Analysis of Scholarly Article

There is an undeniable importance of scholarly writing. Given the relevance of published work in our daily lives (the knowledge gained from it, the instruction sheet from the medical profession, etc.) and the status given to its author, it is not surprising that a lot of effort has been devoted to studying the processes by which research is conducted and written. This is a field of study with a venerable tradition that goes back to the early twentieth century, and one which has accelerated greatly in recent years. The appearance of the EBSSR conference is just one of the signs of the growth of interest in evidence-based understandings of research and writing. At the risk of oversimplifying a complex field of study, we can say that research into research falls into two main traditions, known as the naturalistic and the constructivist paradigms. Studies within the naturalistic tradition tend to seek understanding of the ways in which researchers conduct their investigations, and in particular the strategies and writing techniques by which they seek to produce significant results. Here, the notion of significant results is usually construed in theory-dependent terms: what counts as good research and its significance is held to be relative to the prevailing understandings within a disciplinary community, and it is usually the case that researchers themselves are the best informants on how they engaged in work aimed at changing or refining the presuppositions that underpin these practices.

3. Evaluation of Methodology

By researching the research design, it is possible to make an approximate judgement of the quality of research. However, it is not appropriate to assume a correlation between poor methodology and bad research, as there are some exceptions to the rule. Despite this, the better the research design and the closer the match with the empirical research question, the more likely the research will be of good quality. This is especially applicable to quantitative research. This may be due to the increased pressure and flexibility involved in experimental research, where a general lack of competence in research may result in a poor research design. It is uncommon to see a bad research design which is induced by a competitive design. This has been echoed by indicating that in mental health services research, research methodology has a significant impact on the power of research to influence health policy and practice (Curry et al., 2003). This is important to consider when reading a research article, as a quality research design means that the research can make a more significant contribution to the medical sciences.

In evaluating a research article, the review process always starts with the question, “Is this research any good?” The vast majority of research articles are published, yet it is only a small percentage that are truly good quality research. This is due to the wide variety in methodology quality and the difference in methodology between various types of research (Hart, 1998).

4. Discussion of Findings

This study was an experimental study, and the independent variable in this study was exposure to muscle increase information. The dependent variable was self-determined muscle increase. This study was testing the hypothesis that exposure to muscle dysmorphia in advertisements would result in increased muscle dysmorphia symptomology. The hypothesis was partially supported in this study. It was found that participants who were exposed to the experimental condition of modern muscularity had significantly higher scores on self-determined muscle increase compared to participants in the control condition. This result was expected because, as seen in previous research on eating disorders, if someone is repeatedly exposed to advertisements that display a certain type of body image, it can have a negative effect on how that person views their own body. This can then result in acting upon the desire to achieve the body image viewed in the advertisement. This was evident in the study as some participants actually stated that they now thought it was necessary to have a bigger body build as they felt small or weak compared to men in the modern muscularity condition. However, contrary to the hypothesis, there was no significant difference on drive for size subscales between conditions. This result may have occurred for a number of reasons. It is possible that attaining a physically muscular body image is right now beyond the reach of the average gym-goer, therefore they did not feel the need to increase their muscle size. Also, participants may not have seen the drive for size subscales as a way to build muscle, rather than a way to attain a leaner athlete-like physique.

5. Conclusion and Recommendations

…Reviewing is a mainstay of academic and commercial cultures. The intent of this study has been to highlight the importance of the review activity and to make reviewers more efficient when they give content at workshops, for research projects, and in advertising the implications of their research. We have primarily discussed reviewing in the context of peer reviews of scholarly articles and grants because we consider the review to be a worthy intellectual activity that theoretically might be institutionalized for the good of science and society. However, the concepts of this essay transfer directly to other types of review such as performance evaluation and the decision whether to accept or reject a manuscript, article, book, job candidate, or paper submitted to a conference. In case of decision-making reviews, there is a parallel between a rejected paper and an error of omission in a hypothesis testing framework. In the case of accepting conference papers, the purpose of reviewing might best be served by a public discussion of relative merits rather than binary decision. We view the review primarily as an informative process for authors and readers rather than a means of controlling quality. A formal report submitted to an editor can be viewed as data analysis with the additional benefit of obtaining the answers to specific questions posed by the authors. We have not made a sharp distinction between reviews and editing because both share the goal of improving a manuscript in the eyes of authors and potential readers. The difference is only that an author seeks an edit from someone whose own expertise and understanding of the manuscript’s audience is sufficiently close to the author’s so that the edit will be educative as well as improving. We have focused on the reviewer’s rather than the author’s perspective because we feel that authors already have much advice available on how to write an article and grant. Our task has been to increase the efficiency of the reviewer’s activity so that the advice given is sage and productive. By efficiency, we do not mean the number of hours spent per review; it is often better to spend several hours over a period of days than to do the entire job at once. We mean using the available information wisely to provide maximal insight with a feasible amount of review time. Often the job is to convince a very busy colleague to invest an hour reading a paper or a project despite the possibility that it will be rejected or lead to a dead end.