{"id":2433,"date":"2011-03-10T15:05:16","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T22:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2433"},"modified":"2011-03-10T15:05:16","modified_gmt":"2011-03-10T22:05:16","slug":"how-to-read-an-academic-journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2433","title":{"rendered":"How to Read an Academic Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"

“It’s not Harry Potter<\/a>,” writes Rob “Instant Mentor” Weir at Inside Higher Education.<\/em><\/p>\n

Students register surprise when I confess that I share some of their frustrations over academic writing. Quite a few scholars are dreadful writers. There is, in my view, entirely too much pretentiousness, jargon, and affected weightiness oozing from journal pages. That\u2019s why the first thing I tell students is to identify their purpose <\/em>for consulting a professional work. What do they hope to extract? Do they need to learn from the author\u2019s theoretical perspective, or mine the piece for examples? Are they reading it to contribute to a class discussion, or to collect perspectives to use in a paper? These matters determine their reading strategy<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing<\/a>. It’s short. You can even skim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“It’s not Harry Potter,” writes Rob “Instant Mentor” Weir at Inside Higher Education. Students register surprise when I confess that I share some of their frustrations over academic writing. Quite a few scholars are dreadful writers. There is, in my view, entirely too much pretentiousness, jargon, and affected weightiness oozing from journal pages. That\u2019s why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-2433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-Df","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2304,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2304","url_meta":{"origin":2433,"position":0},"title":"Paranthropology Journal Available Online","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Three issues of the journal Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal are available online as PDF files. I had been meaning to download these for a while\u2014finally did it, and I look forward to reading them.","rel":"","context":"In \"anthropology\"","block_context":{"text":"anthropology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=anthropology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Paranthropology 1:2","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/paranthropology.weebly.com\/uploads\/3\/4\/8\/4\/3484934\/8545766.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3798,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3798","url_meta":{"origin":2433,"position":1},"title":"The “New Yorker rule”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I work together on many editing projects. Yesterday, the author of a journal article, reading her galleys, said that she thought that expressions such as \"sui generis,\"\u00a0 \"axis mundi,\"*\u00a0 and \"Weltanschauung\" should be italicized as foreign expressions. (I had them in roman.) I consulted the holy scriptures, where\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":100,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=100","url_meta":{"origin":2433,"position":2},"title":"Haifa Wehbe Watch","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Ever since my original post about Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe (or Wahbi), this blog has been receiving sporadic hits from the Middle East: Israel, Syria, Egypt, Dubai . . . Apparently she and some of her peers have really undermined traditional Arab ideas of beauty. But I say this to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9550,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9550","url_meta":{"origin":2433,"position":3},"title":"Does No One Read the Description?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 25, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I was in my first month as managing editor of the (long-gone) Colorado Outdoor Journal when an article came in about fishing in Utah. Hello? \"Colorado\" is in the title. When I was freelancing for commercial magazines, I was told always to read at least a couple of issues before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5768,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5768","url_meta":{"origin":2433,"position":4},"title":"Heathenry and the Politics of Postcolonialism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 27, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Thad Horrell, Heathen and graduate student, hurls himself against the issue of post-colonialism and reconstructed Northern religion in this article, \"Heathenry as a Postcolonial Movement,\" published in the online Journal of Religion, Identity and Politics,\u00a0written by students in his PhD program. His thesis is \"that Heathenry is 'postcolonial'\u00a0 in complex\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":880,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=880","url_meta":{"origin":2433,"position":5},"title":"More Book Piles","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The \"what I am reading\" book pile challenge is taken up by Anne Hill and Victoria Slind-Flor.UPDATE: One more, from Daven's Journal.","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2433"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2435,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions\/2435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}