Level 5

Purpose:

• To learn about Peer Reviewed articles.
• To learn that trust, for trust's sake, has no place in academia.

Peer-reviewed

• Means other experts in the same discipline, such as Psychology, Biology, Art, Theater, review the written research for faults or errors.
• These experts do not know who the other judges are.
• The journal editor knows everyone and hides that information.
• The aim is so people don't judge people, but judge the written research.
• If the judges vote YEA, the journal will print that article.

What's the point?

• Without peer review in industry, science, and academia, everyone would have to test every piece of information every day.
• New headache medicine? better run the tests yourself because no one else would have.
• Air bags work? Better hit something and test them, because no one else did.
• Most of your day is surrounded by items, ideas, and objects that were tested by others to be efficacious or effective.

Why do I need to know this?

• Most of your research papers in other courses will have a rubric that says you must use x number of peer reviewed articles.
• In your BA years, you will be reading peer-reviewed articles weekly for classes, because the newest peer reviewed articles are the most up-to-date useful information in any field of study, months if not years before that information makes it into a new volume of a textbook.

I do not trust you

• I cannot trust you.
• Research is based on other research and citations, not on trust for trust's sake.
• That's why you have to cite your sources.
• That's why scientific research must be replicable by other scientists.
• That's why you have to include peer-reviewed articles in research.

Process

1. Find peer-reviewed journal articles about your broader theme on EFSC's databases.
   • This page shows how to find an article
2. The articles must have been published in 2021 or later.
3. The Main Container of the Tracking Sheet must cover what the journal's discipline topics are.
4. In the MAIN CONTAINER, begin with these words The journal journal Name goes here...
5. Some databases will have a link to this information with the rest of the citation information.
6. Others will not have a link and you'll have to search for that Journal's website on the internet, find its About page, and write up that information in your own way.
7. The rest of the Tracking Sheet follows TS 1-4.
   • In the SECOND CONTAINER, summarize the article and begin with these words: The article "Article Name goes here" ...
   • Say how it helps your research
   • Lead-in a quoted passage from the article.

Proofs of sources

• You must submit three files when submitting your assignment
  1. The tracking sheet
     • File Name: LastnameTrackingsheet#.docx
     • Where # is the number of the tracking sheet
  2. The Proofs (see below) in a word document
     • File Name: LastnameTrackingsheet#Proofs.docx
  3. The pdf of the article from the database
     • File Name: LastnameTrackingsheet#.pdf

• How to make the proofs
  • You MUST submit two Proofs together in one Word File
    1. a screen shot of the Details section from the EFSC database article
    2. a screenshot of the part of the article you are quoting
  • One proof must be a screenshot of the Details Page: Example
  • The second proof (put into the same document as the above proof) needs to be a full screen screenshot of the area you are quoting in the paper. HIGHLIGHT the quoted passage before taking the screen shot.
  • The screen shot must be a full screen shot--of your whole screen; do not crop it.
  • The screenshots must be pasted into a second Word document (that must be submitted in the same email with the paper).
  • The screen shot document must be labeled like this: LastnameTropesProofs.docx
• Submit the pdf of the article.
  • If the article you found does not have a pdf on the databases for you to download, then choose a different source.
  • Rename the pdf like this: LastnameTrackingsheet#.pdf

Caveats

• No pus words.
• Do not plagiarize. Use your own words
• If your quoted passage was already quoted in the article (the author quoted somebody else), you will need to indicate as such in your lead-in sentence. Below is an example of Susan Gomez quoting Joe Smith in her article, and you are using Joe Smith's quoted words:
  • Joe Smith, in Susan Gomez's article "Blah de Blah," suggests we should choose words carefully: "Garbley garble garble garbley garble"
• Spelling counts
  • This is also a training to have you test if a spell checker is active on any digital platform (college application sites, job application sites, pdfs for job aps, etc)
  • The Tracking Sheet will not spell check for you
  • If you use a a word that Word would have flagged as incorrectly spelled, I will return the tracking sheet with the word SPELLING in the file name.
• Later in the term, after all 5 Tracking Sheets, you'll be collating all of the Tracking Sheets into one document for the Annotated Bibliography assignment.
  • At some point, you will be copying and pasting all of the information in the Tracking Sheets.
  • You can copy and paste every Tracking Sheet as you complete them and have all that information in one document, annotatedbibliogrpahy.docx, for later in the term.
  • Or, you can attempt to spell correctly in all the Tracking Sheets, and then later in the term you can sit down and copy and paste all that data from all 5 Tracking Sheets.

Visual Instructions for the Tracking Sheets