Study O'Clock

So, Ariaste seems to think that "academic rigor" is about YOUR passion, YOUR enthusiasm, YOUR hyperfixation, YOU YOU YOU, it's all YOU AND YOUR FEELINGS. But the baseline for calling something "academic" is that it passes peer review. All publishing (fiction or nonfiction) goes through editors, but academic publishing has one necessary extra step: it gets sent out to other experts in the field, who evaluate whether the work is following the right disciplinary protocols, is using evidence reasonably and responsibly, and is meeting the professional standards of that field. Academic work is a very specific conversation, and if you want to participate, you have to prove--and keep proving--to other experts that your work is up to snuff. That's because academic texts are speaking with a particular weight and authority, which is a serious responsibility. Peer review is quality control.

You can't practice as a master electrician or a lawyer or a rabbi unless you've fulfilled the requirements specific to those jobs, as determined by credentialed experts in those fields. It is simply not your call: "academic rigor" is something academics get to define, because it is our term for our professional standards. Unlike Ariaste's self-centered FEELINGS, real academic rigor is a collaborative process that requires formal input from other experts.

So, some people on my dash are reading John Green's book Everything is Tuberculosis, and are enjoying it and learning a lot; all the reviews I've seen, including from professional epidemiologists, are very positive. But no one--including Green--is using the term "academic rigor," because this book is not being presented as an academic work! It is, by all accounts, very well-researched, thoughtful, and conscientious, and an excellent and accessible discussion for a general audience. Green doesn't need to meet academic protocols, because he's not writing for academics. That is not the conversation he is having, and it is unfair to apply that model of evaluation. Explaining specialized material to a wide audience is important and necessary work, and creative writers and journalists often excel at it; many academics... do not. They're different skill sets, that follow different rules, for different conversations. Correct labeling is what matters here.

You can't call an Italian sparkling wine "champagne," and you can't claim "enthusiasm" is the same as "academic rigor." They are different things. Champagne, like academic work, must adhere to particular standards in order to get that label. To someone who knows nothing about wine, champagne and prosecco might seem identical. They might be equally delicious, and can be appreciated as such! But taste is subjective; "this wine is/is not from the Champagne region" or "this did/did not go through peer review" is not subjective. And anyone selling Italian wine as "champagne," or saying "my PASSION is equivalent to professional expertise," is making a fraudulent claim. They are mislabeling their work to claim an authority to which they are not entitled. It might be out of ignorance, not a malicious attempt to deceive, but the effect is the same.

Now, in my field (folklore), we place a high value on "tradition (or culture) bearers": people from a folk community with a great deal of specialized knowledge of that community, like, say, a longtime participant in a fandom. This "vernacular knowledge" is specifically sought out and respected within folkloristics--we literally cannot do our jobs without it! But when I publish an academic piece, my work will have to be sent out for review by other folklorists, to make sure that it is engaging appropriately with the discipline. If I want my work to be taken as a serious entry into that conversation, I have to follow that set of rules.

Succeeding under that rule set is extremely difficult without high-level training. It's not impossible to acquire knowledge, especially if you have access to a university library, but engaging with that knowledge on par with our professional norms requires a lot of guidance from people in the field. And the best way to get that is through a formal graduate program. Of course, access to those programs is limited in all kinds of unfair socioeconomic ways, and there are lots of passionate, talented people who would make great scholars, but never had the opportunity, which sucks. But that is a different conversation.

Sure! This can't be one size fits all for every field, but I can give some starting points for history.

If you're reading a book, here's what to consider:

1. Are there footnotes or endnotes? In academia this is our way of being transparent with each other about where you got information. If a book doesn't have them, they're more interested in telling a good story than being accountable to their peers. That's a red flag.

2. Don't trust claims that seem very specific but don't have a source. Broad claims can be the author's analysis. But specific things "so and so said this" "there was a rumor that (x)" should be coming from somewhere and it is the author's job to tell you where.

3. Look out for choppy quoting. Even if someone has a source, they may not be using it well. If someone is paraphrasing a lot and only uses bits and pieces of the text while also using a lot of ellipses, you will want to try to find the whole text to make sure it's being quoted fairly.

4. Look at the publication date. Knowledge changes with time and old books tend to be outdated. You don't have to stick to the academic rule of thumb of "25 years is the threshold for new scholarship" but do be aware that if something is over 50 years old, many many people have likely revisited and revised what it's saying. Not that new books can't also be bad and incorrect, but they tend to be working with better tools generally.

5. Look up the author. I cannot stress this one enough. The author's background and political convictions can matter a lot to how they interpret things. For example, one of the biographies people tend to pick up about my dissertation topic is from the late 1920s by a man who later applied to join the NSDAP. That fact really can't be separated from his interpretations no matter how hard people try.

6. Stop reading if someone is making a lot of moral or personal judgements on a historical figure. I'm talking about the "Elizabeth I was a frigid hag and men found her ugly"-esque takes, not things like calling historical atrocities morally bad. Does it feel like bitchy gossip? That sort of thing is unprofessional, uninformative, and means someone has an axe to grind. Spite can be motivation for research, but axe grinding shouldn't show up clearly in published work.

These are things to keep in mind to make sure you're getting better information. Others are free to add on for their field or if there's something I forgot.

Hi Tumblr researchers,

As promised, we're going to dive into some best practices for searching on JSTOR. This'll be a long one!

The first thing to note is that JSTOR is not Google, so searches should not be conducted in the same way.

More on that in this video:

Basic Search on JSTOR

To search for exact phrases, enclose the words within quotation marks, like "to be or not to be".

To construct a more effective search, utilize Boolean operators, such as "tea trade" AND china.

Advanced Searching on JSTOR

Utilize the drop-down menus to refine your search parameters, limiting them to the title, author, abstract, or caption text.

Combine search terms using Boolean operators like AND/OR/NOT and NEAR 5/10/25. The NEAR operator finds keyword combinations within 5, 10, or 25 words of each other. It applies only when searching for single keyword combinations, such as "cat NEAR 5 dog," but not for phrases like "domesticated cat" NEAR 5 dog.

Utilize the "Narrow by" options to search for articles exclusively, include/exclude book reviews, narrow your search to a specific time frame or language.

To focus your article search on specific disciplines and titles, select the appropriate checkboxes. Please note that discipline searching is currently limited to journal content, excluding ebooks from the search.

Finding Content You Have Access To

To discover downloadable articles, chapters, and pamphlets for reading, you have the option to narrow down your search to accessible content. Simply navigate to the Advanced Search page and locate the "Select an access type" feature, which offers the following choices:

All Content will show you all of the relevant search results on JSTOR, regardless of whether or not you can access it.

Content I can access will show you content you can download or read online. This will include Early Journal Content and journals/books publishers have made freely available.

Once you've refined your search, simply select an option that aligns with your needs and discover the most relevant items. Additionally, you have the option to further narrow down your search results after conducting an initial search. Look for this option located below the "access type" checkbox, situated at the bottom left-hand side of the page.

Additional resources

I haven't had a pretty journey at all. I'm graduating with a bachelor's degree at 25. I've been in college nonstop since I was 18. I've failed a lot of classes and had to go part time. So many things have happened. But I will have the degree. And that degree is worth the exact same as someone who got it in 3 years. The knowledge I have is mine to keep.

[research life]

Sure! This is something I was taught at drama school and it's been great advice for me both in acting and in life.

We were rehearsing a play and one of the actors was struggling a bit with a scene (it was Macbeth, I think). He said something like, "I'm just not very confident!" and our facilitator said, "Confidence is bullshit. It's bullshit used to sell self-help books. Do you know your lines? Have you done your preparation? Are you warmed up? Then you are entitled to go on stage and command the audience's time and attention. If you haven't done those things, then you're a professional actor - you know what you have to do to be ready - go do it! Whether you're confident or not simply isn't relevant." And the actor internalised that advice and he went out and gave an absolutely cracking turn as Macbeth!