Submitted by Sibrina Collins / College of Arts and Sciences at Lawrence Technological University on Mon, 01/23/2012 - 12:56
Forums

Colleagues,

What tools and tips do you provide to students when they are asked to critique a research article? What do you consider some good advice to help the students prepare a critique?

Thanks,

Sibrina

Barbara Reisner / James Madison University

Sibrina, I've taught our Literature and Seminar course on and off for the years. In the past, I gave the students some "critical reading questions" taken from Kovac and Sherwood's "Writing Across the Chemistry Curriculum." I can't find my copy, but my student handout cites p. 76-77. A more recent piece of guidance that I've found is an article in "EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union" (volume 92, number 28, 12 July 2011, p 233-234) called Quick Guide to Writing a  Solid Peer Review by K.A. Nicholas and W. Gordon. In there you can find some nice reading prompts as well as the domains on which you should critique a paper. It's not specific to a particular scientific discipline which is why I find it useful.

Thu, 01/26/2012 - 04:24 Permalink