RLG100/RLG280: The World's Religions in Global Perspective

Critical analysis begins at the research process—when you start to gather the sources that you will use to contribute your own ideas in your essays: 

• the libraries at the University of Toronto have thousands of books, journals, and primary sources—learning not only how to navigate, but also to select the best sources in this “information universe” is an essential academic skill
• Knowing the starting points of research—where to find the best, the most relevant, and the most useful materials for your paper is part of doing research critically. 

High School vs. Academic Research

In high school, you were probably used to gathering up all the sources you could find in one library—your high school library—and then summarizing what you have found:

• however, simply reading up on a topic and explaining it will not result in writing a research essay!
• the type of essays that you wrote in high school involves amassing a bunch of sources, reading and absorbing them, and finally writing a summary of your findings: one common complaint among professors is the absence of critical analysis in the student papers. 

Doing academic research is not such a simple, straightforward process:

• as an emerging scholar, you are not only required to be familiar with the topic and what has been published on it, but you are also required to identify a specific issue, contribute intellectual analysis, and by extent, advance knowledge within the discipline 
• your argument should answer the questions raised in the assignment description and be informed by the best sources that you can find.  

Scholars (that is, your professors) contribute to advancing research in their respective disciplines by publishing books, articles, reviewing others scholars’ publications, and participating in conferences—this is defined as the scholarly communication process: 

• it involves discussion and exchange of ideas between the scholars
• as an undergraduate student, you are considered to be an emerging scholar, who is learning to be part of this process
• you are required to be familiar with the conventions governing the academic community. This includes familiarity with th resources that scholars use to conduct their research. 

Articles

You might be asked to find “peer-reviewed” journal articles for your essay: 

• the peer review process means that manuscripts are evaluated by other scholars in the field in order to determine whether they are worthy of being published
• essentially, it is quality control within a specific discipline and means that the journal article that is published in a peer reviewed or refereed journal has been evaluated by experts before it sees the light of day. 

Not all scholarly journals are peer-reviewed, but that does not mean that they are not scholarly:

• a good indication of whether the journal is scholarly is the publisher: a university, academic society, and publishers who specialize in producing academic work.  

Articles published in non-scholarly, popular journals, which you can find near the checkout counter (such as Skeptic), are reviewed by the editorial staff and are not considered to be refereed. 

Ulrich's Web Global Serials Directory
Use this index to determine whether a journal is scholarly and/or peer-reviewed:

1. Type the title of the journal (e.g. Philosophy of Science) into the search box.
2. Click on the title in the search results.
3. Look under fields Refereed (Yes) and Content Type (Academic / Scholarly).
   

Books

Books are not as easily identified as peer-reviewed: 

• although many books go through some type of review process before they are published, most books are not clearly identified as peer-reviewed or non-peer-reviewed
• most professors won’t probably ask you to find “peer-reviewed books” per se i
• instead, they might ask you to find scholarly book reviews (i.e. not on Amazon!).