STEM Librarian
Getting Started on Class Discussions
Each week you will be paired up with a classmate to a lead discussion of a topic based on your assigned article. The discussion involves both summarizing the article (a one-page handout is suggested) and generating questions on the topic based on the article.
| Jan 20 | Early Earth |
| January 27 | Age of the Earth and Solar System, formation of planets |
| February 3 | Origin of Earth's crust, mantle, core |
| February 10 | Origin and evolution of Earth's hydrosphere |
| February 17 | Origin and evolution of Earth's atmosphere |
| February 24 | Origin of life on Earth |
| March 3 | Snowball Earth and Precambrian climate |
| March 17 | Mass extinctions in Earth history |
| March 24 | Cenozoic hothouse and icehouse |
| April 7 | Current and future climate change |
Finding Articles for Class Discussion
If you know the title of the article you have been assigned, simply type the article name into OneSearch.
- Baylor OneSearchOneSearch is a discovery resource that replaces BearCat and provides a single place to search most of the content available from the Baylor University Libraries, including:
, - traditional library materials (books, journal titles, media, etc.);
, - the Baylor Digital Collections;
, - BEARdocs, (electronic theses and dissertations, honors theses, technical reports, faculty publications, etc.);
, - research guides;
, - and -- most importantly, much of the full text content to which the Baylor Libraries subscribe from a wide variety of sources.
If you have the volume/issue/page number for the article you have been assigned you can either look the journal up in OneSearch and then link the journal or go directly to publisher's website.
- GeoScienceWorld This link opens in a new windowMany non-profit geological associations work with GeoScienceWorld to host their journals online. You can either use the browse feature or the search feature to find your assigned article if the journal is hosted by GeoScienceWorld
- Elsevier Journals in the Earth SciencesElsevier is a leading scientific publisher that publishes over a hundred earth science journals. You can browse or search for your assigned article directly from their website.
Reading, Summarizing, and Annotating a Scientific Paper
Scientific research articles usually include
- abstract: highlights of the major points of the paper
- introduction/background: context and purpose or the experiment
- methods: what was done
- results: sometimes combined with the methods or analysis
- analysis: how well did the experiment work
- discussion: sometimes combined with the analysis or conclusions
- conclusions/future work
Knowing the different sections of a scientific article will make it easier to understand the article. By comparing the same section across papers, you might be able to discern how the science has evolved or the influences of one group on the other.
Questions and themes to consider as you read.
- Evaluation of the author’s background. Affiliation of authors and (if possible) some evaluation of their level of expertise. Sometimes you can check the bibliography and see that they have published many articles on the topic. In other cases this is harder from a journal article.
- For whom is the article intended? Other researchers in the field? Physicians? General public?
- Brief summary of how study was conducted and key findings.
- This may include the purpose or the hypothesis behind the experiment, the method used to test the hypothesis, whether the data support the hypothesis or not, and why.
- Relevance of this information to your bibliography topic. “This study clarifies the mechanism by which the disease is transmitted…..: etc.
