The 10 point plan for reading journal articles

One of the hardest things students need to get past is the idea that academic journals are too difficult for them to read. In general, I think reading academic writing is simply a matter of technique. 

However, students must have good inputs in order to have good outputs: that is, their academic writing will not improve unless their inputs are of good quality. So to get to the 'right' academic writing standard, they must be reading and processing academic/journal articles. 

In my experience, getting better at reading journal articles is a matter of practice. The more we tackle reading this type of work, the better we get at understanding them. Given the will to apply themselves, I have seen that any student can tackle them. What is often missing is a strategy to approach each piece. To chunk down how much is tackled at any one time. To create familiarisation. To not try to eat the entire elephant at once (Gilbert, 1992).  

I suggest that students new to reading academic materials begin to build their 'muscles' by tacking articles in the following way:

1. Read the abstract. 
2. Then read the conclusion. 
3. Then come back and read the introduction. 
4. If - after reading these three elements - there is nothing that relates to our project, we stop reading. 
5. If the work does relate to what we are doing, then read the discussion. 
6. Lastly, we can review the whole article, including the method. 
7. We make notes from the bits which strongly relate to our work. 
8. We look up the sources for those bits in the reference list ("reference mining"). 
9.  Then when we are looking for our next article, we check out the key words in that article to see if any of them might relate to what we are doing. 
10. We then find the other source articles, and read those articles, following the same format. 

In each section there are a range of questions to ask ourselves: 

• "Does anything apply to my project?"
• "Are there similarities in this work and what I am proposing to do?"
• "Are the participants similar to mine?"
• "Are the results similar to what I am expecting to get?"
• "Is the context similar to my context?"
• "Are the methods similar to my proposed methods?"

If we answer yes to any of the questions above, we make notes from that paper on that section. Then we repeat - we move onto the next source. 

That usually works to get us started.

Sam

References:

Gilbert, J. (1992). How to Eat an Elephant: A slice by slice guide to total quality management. Tudor Business Publishing.

read more "The 10 point plan for reading journal articles"

Building a knowledge network

I plan on restarting my PhD, and am currently exploring tools to smooth the process. Open to any hacks I can find, recently I saw a video by Morgan Eua (2022), a Canadian PhD scholar who is using two key pieces of kit for her study: a system of notation called Zettelkasten; and a tool to trap the information called Obsidian.

The system: Zettelkasten

Zettelkasten is a note taking system or process. A knowledge management web, perhaps. It was designed by sociologist and professor Niklas Luhmann somewhere in the 1950s, enabling him to publish over 550 pieces of academic work during his lifetime. Having died in 1993, Professor Luhmann's papers apparently contain a hundred or more semi-complete papers which are still being worked through and are being published thirty years posthumously (Schmidt, 2016).

This prolific output is attributed to the card index system that Professor Luhmann developed to codify his ideas, the connection between ideas, and bridging theory. On some 67,000 A6 index cards, he collected bibliographic information, small excerpts from readings, and page numbers detailing the academic reading. Each card contains one idea from a reading, which he later connected to other cards via his filing method. The filing method used a numbering system similar to a Word document outline: setting master chapters (e.g. 3), then each sub-heading (3.1), and sub-sub-heading (3.1.1) slipped underneath where there was connection (Schmidt, 2016). Thus ideas were cross-tabbed as they were consumed and processed.

Professor Luhmann effectively created a far more detailed Dewey decimal system to reorganise his notes into concept clusters, as each was filed (Schmidt, 2016). Each idea had a separate note, and bibliographic links/ideas would be filed in multiple places, wherever the source linked to any other idea in his taxonomy. This enabled him to more easily write: he effectively had a non-computerised database.

For the more practical applications of Zettelkasten, also read Ahrens (2017), and Fast (2020).

The tool: Obsidian

Luckily, we can use Professor Lehmann's system using a computer instead of index cards. Obsidian allows us to trap the same ideas using a live link label feature. Even better, we only need trap each idea once to allow multiple notes/links/nodes to form, building a nodular cloud (Eua, 2022, 15:03). While there are a number of tutorials for how to do this, I was very taken with Morgan Eua's video (2022), which laid out her thought process with a quick tutorial clearly showing the benefits of where the two systems connect.

We can create labels for the bibliographic entry, insert quotes, page numbers, write the item in our own words for what each idea actually means to us, and link to multiple other notes. One entry on its own has no value. 100 entries from a single piece of work has a small amount of meaning. But 100 entries from 100 pieces of academic writing starts to map a PhD (Eua, 2022), and helps us to see connections which we may not have seen without a lot more time to think.

The best thing is that Obsidian is downloadable as freeware if you are a single user (2022). See the link below.

Morgan recommended a list of sources, which I relist below, along with Morgan's video, which is well worth a watch (Eua, 2022).

Good luck!

Sam

References:

Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Eua, M. (28 January 2022). The FUN and EFFICIENT note-taking system I use in my PhD [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/L9SLlxaEEXY

Fast, S. (27 October 2020). Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method. https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/

Obsidian. (2022). Pricing [and download link]. https://obsidian.md/pricing

Schmidt, J. F. K. (2016). Chapter 12: Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine. In A. Cevolini (Ed.) Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe (pp. 287-311). Brill Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004325258_014

read more "Building a knowledge network"

How to take EXCELLENT notes

Visually published their annual The 18 Best Infographics of 2015, on 17 December 2015. Of those that they published, I was most taken by the work done by the Westminster Bridge Student Accommodation, on the "Ultimate guide to note taking in class".


Sam

References:

• Visual.ly (17 December 2015). The 18 Best Infographics of 2015. Retrieved 29 December 2015 from http://blog.visual.ly/18-best-infographics-2015/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRolvKrNZKXonjHpfsX56ewtX6K3lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ARMZnI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFTbLMMaRo17gJWBA%3D
• Westminster Bridge Student Accommodation (16 March 2015). Ultimate guide to note taking in class infographic. Retrieved 29 December 2015 from http://wbsa.co.uk/the-ultimate-guide-to-note-taking-in-class-infographic/

read more "How to take EXCELLENT notes"