My friend asked me to write about this topic. He claims that verbatimly read academic articles gives him headache. I agreed as I've gone through, in fact still going through the same experience. I've read, read and read the same article so many times but still do not know what it's all about! I was told by many friends that it is normal to be in that situation. The funny thing is that, they say, "if you understand, it's not PhD, if you don't understand, it's PhD". No wonder, people say that PhD is "Permanent head Damage"!ha!ha!ha!
Reading academic article is not like reading novels or magazines. I don't think fast reading really help here. To me, smart reading helps a lot. I'm not sure about the literal definition of smart reading but I define smart reading as reading by knowing what we're looking for. Academic articles published in journal normally have standard contents - e.g., abstract, intoruction, LR, purpose of study, methodology, contribution of study, framework, underlying theory, findings and conclusion. In short, it just like full PhD report but in a compressed form. We may have to read thoroughly first few articles, especially the main articles (i.e. articles that closely related to our study). Reading the abstract and conclusion first might help in understanding the whole article. Moreover, understanding of one article can comes from explanation given in other related articles. My areas of study are ERP and Management Accounting. I was lucky (in this sense) because there are articles written about the "integrative review" on each of the two areas.
Reading literatures is the longest process coz' it has to be done up to preparing our final report. This is to ensure that our reports include the latest literatures in the area.
To read other articles in this category, please click "PhD" in the Category section on your right (you may have to scroll down):
- PhD - How to manage your articles?
- PhD_Conference alerts
- PhD- What is the hardest part?
- PhD-Supervisor!
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