How do I do good, scholarly work?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m an undergrad sophomore, and I’m doing a pretty hefty independent study on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with an emphasis on the role domestic politics in the West Bank/Gaza Strip (WBGS) and Israel play in that conflict. The major component of this study is a Big Freaking Paper (a technical term) on the subject, drawing from the texts on a reading list I created, as well as any other sources I’ve found.

The “any other sources” bit is the problem. The more I read, the more stuff I find that I realize I really ought to read in order to clear up a certain point, or give another point more depth, or just to make sure I’ve got enough different perspectives to satisfy the needs of academic rigor. For instance, I’ll be reading Cordesman’s “Escalating to Nowhere” rough draft, and he’ll mention the demographic issues, and I’ll realize it would be cool if I knew the age demographics of the Likud and Labour parties in Israel - particularly, whether Labour has a lot more young people than Likud. So I run to google, and I don’t find that, but I do find a Brookings institute monograph with an alternative to the Roadmap to Peace that emphasizes radical reform of the Palestinian government, so I figure I ought to read that and use it…

You get the point. The more I read, the more I realize I need to read and learn. This isn’t uncommon, I understand - but for me, it’s new. I’m trying to produce something that is at or near publishable quality (I don’t know if I’ll hit it, but I’m trying) - and I don’t know how to cut myself off. Even worse, new material keeps coming out.

So, here are my questions: Where do I draw the line? Do I keep watching for new scholarly articles like a hawk, so that my paper incorporates all the latest material? Do I just stick with the reading list, and a modest number of journal articles, and accept that some of what I say will be out of date? In short - how do I know what to read?

I realize this is a difficult question, and if any dopers want more details I’d be glad to post them. If anyone has any advice or thoughts, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!

2

I’m not in the same area as you, but I’m an academic, so I have to write a lot of papers and read a lot of student assignments, research papers etc.

Firstly, if your reading list is mainly books, then I’d be surprised if you were expected to read them in their entirety in order to write up a paper. It might be something to aim for as a background task, but unless the whole text was directly relevant to the discussion, I’d try and be more discerning.

Recent articles are good. Not just things you may have happened to see in that weeks news papers, including more indepth articles should score bonus points. We like evidence of independent learning. The advantage of journal articles is that they are shorter and publication time is shorter. Make sure you use trusted sources.

As for for your cut off point: getting lost in the volume of information when researching a new subject is not uncommon. I still do it when looking into a new area. What you must avoid is making the research into a displacement activity to avoid the write up. So to do that, start writing up. Start with the structure of the paper. Then start filling it in. That way, you can add more information as an when you read it and decide if it’s relevant.

Finally, as you said, you’re new to this. You are keen to know the ins and outs of the subject. Good for you. Balance this desire against the need to submit something to a particular deadline. Better to hand in something less than perfect. You could add footnotes or a critical appraisal of your report* saying you would have liked to be able to read more on {a particular area of the subject} because you feel it would have helped you to {improve on a particular aspect of your report}.

Again not knowing your area, university or anything, I’ve no idea if these are required. When my students are writing “Big Freaking Papers” (or projects as we call them, in the region of 10 000 +) they are required to have a section reflecting on what they have done, so this would be the place for suggesting how the report could have been improved)

sorry this a bit of a brain dump (do as I say not as I do, kids) - I’m in a bit of a hurry sicne the boss has just summoned me to meet him for lunch.

3

Ahh, memories… Although I’m in the physical sciences and not political science, I know exactly how you feel, having struggled with the same kind of issues while writing my dissertation and beyond. A lot of my interests require a multidisciplinary view, and it’s all too easy to spiral off in a dozen different directions every time I find an interesting new tidbit.

When you tackle a hefty topic for a paper, you need to decide whether you are aiming for a review paper of some kind, or whether you’d like to do some new analysis. Review papers by their very nature tend to become these massive chunks of text in which it is more important to include as much previous work as possible. Such papers become a valuable resource for other people (all those references!) but probably won’t break any new ground.

A more tractable project, especially given your time limitations (done by the end of the semester, no?), would involve picking some piece of it to focus on. “The role of domestic politics” is way too broad. How about looking at some aspect of Likud’s or Labour’s policies, or perhaps the two parties’ disparate responses to similar events? (Not sure what would qualify as especially interesting for you, but I hope you get the idea.) The advantage of picking a narrower topic, apart from having to deal with fewer sources, is that you have the time to really explore your topic in-depth, and the chances are greater that you can come up with new perspectives or insights that would make your paper of scholarly interest (especially to journal editors!).

Narrowing your topic does require discipline, though. Believe me when I say I understand the impulse to try to know and understand everything that remotely relates to your topic… but you have to be firm and say to yourself, “as interesting as this is, it is beyond the present scope of my paper” and put the extra stuff aside for the time being. At some point also (and this becomes easier as you spend more time in your discipline) you’ll come to discover whose work is considered reliable as a reference and who is “off the wall,” so you can simply give an appropriate citation to another person’s work without having to re-invent the wheel in your own paper.

It’s a fact of life these days in the physical sciences - and perhaps for your field as well - that the long lag time between acceptance of a manuscript and final publication in a journal (sometimes as much as 2 years) means that when your paper finally appears, some part(s) of it may be out of date. That’s really what conferences are for - to let others know what you’re doing until the paper finally comes out.

I gather that you’ve already done a fair bit of reading and have a good grasp of what narrower topics would be interesting to pursue. My advice to you would be to pick one topic, re-draft your basic reading list if necessary, and stick to that for the time being. You can always add on or diverge a bit later on, but you don’t want to set yourself up with an overwhelming amount of work right at the beginning. You can always do that in grad school. :wink:

Good luck!

4

Two things:

One, as others have said but bears repeating: do an outline. If you haven’t done it yet, DO IT NOW. Start with your argument, as in

“In this paper I will argue that A, B, C, and D have led to E” (you can change the wording to something less stilted later, if you want). Then, make A, B, C, D and E into paragraphs of their own, and stick your sub-arguments in there, as in "By A I am referring to … " etc. Stick in your evidence as detailed as possible. Make sure you are always guided by your key points and the thread of your argument. This should help you avoid digressing by too much - if you can’t figure out where something should go in your outline structure, you probably don’t need to put it in. Save it for your next paper.

Two: the phrase “… is beyond the scope of this paper. For further discussion see Jones 1994 (etc).” can take you very far.

5

Thanks, all. Further gratitude is beyond the scope of this post - please see any Mercotan thread for written expressions of thanks, by various authors.

:smiley:

6

Perfect ! :smiley: