How to Select an Article for Discussion

How to Select an Article for Discussion

by Felisa Smith

1.         Start early: If you start at least 4 days before you’re supposed to give your article to your instructor, you’ll have plenty of time to get an interlibrary loan article if you choose to.

2.         Skim your chapter: The article you select should directly relate to the ideas in your chapter, but expand on them and how they are currently viewed in the relevant field. It’s ok if you haven’t read your chapter in detail when you pick your article, but skim it so you have a general idea of what topics will be discussed. Take note of the chapter title, section headings, and any figures. If you’re not getting a clear idea of the subject matter from that, read the first sentence of each paragraph. When you’re done, you should have a few key words to use in the next step.

3.         Search for articles online: Using Google Scholar, ISI Web of Science, or the search engine of your choice, search the keywords you selected from your chapter. You might want to look for particular taxa or time periods that interest you. For example, you could search; “rate of evolution”, birds. 

4.         Don’t limit yourself to full text sources: UNL has a lot of journals in full text, but we don’t have everything. If you find an abstract that sounds relevant, but you can’t get the full text, interlibrary loan it! The library will email you .pdf format files of articles you request, and they have a 24 hour turnaround on business days. Also, if we have a journal in print but not online, you can use interlibrary loan to request the library to scan the article for you. You don’t even have to go to the library anymore.

 5.    Pick an article: Read the articles you’re considering in full. Your article should:

• Relate directly to the chapter.
• Be “Like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.” (This is a quote from my 11^th grade history teacher, no joke.) Roughly 10 pages maximum.
• Be fairly recent. I’d say no more than 10 years old.
• Be from the paleo literature. This means it involves fossils, or asks questions about something that happened before written human history. Comparisons of the past with the present are relevant, too.
• Most importantly, it should be something that interests you!

6.         Give the article to the instructor on time! Give your instructor a day or two to check and make sure the article is ok, and your classmates a week to read the article.