What’s the difference between sources and scholarship? Why should I care?

When it comes to investigating or researching things, there is a basic distinction between

(a) evidence and

(b) interpretation or analyse of that evidence.

This distinction is relevant in almost any type of investigation, from rocket science to a criminal investigation by the police.

Evidence = Primary Source. In the case of ancient history or literature, the category ‘evidence’ generally encompasses the ancient sources (e.g. Homer, Sophocles, Livy, Tacitus, coins, inscriptions, archaeological remains).

Primary sources are like the evidence the police gather to solve a crime. Our ancient material is the equivalent of fingerprints, ballistics reports, or ransom notes. We gather our evidence together to discover something new about the ancient world.

Scholarship = Secondary Literature/Source. ‘Scholarship’ is marked by analysis and interpretation of the evidence. It is where the nature and significance of the primary evidence is debated. Your role, as a budding analyzer of evidence, is very similar to that of other modern scholars. In other words, you are entering the (modern) debate about the nature and significance of the evidence; the other participants in this debate are other students and scholars of antiquity.

If we extend the crime scene analogy, scholarship is like the back and forth between different investigators on a case, or between different experts brought in to talk about the ballistics report or the fingerprints. In the case of studying the ancient world at university, you are a bit like Sherlock Holmes. You are investigating a case, and so are the scholars you read. You’re finding clues (evidence, sources) and making sense of them (analysis, interpretation), but you need to tell the police where they messed up (engagement with scholarship). Be kind though!

So, the reason this matters, is because your work on gathering evidence, analysing it, and engaging with the ideas of others is your chance to put your own unique stamp on our understanding of the ancient world. What’s more, by practicing these skills, you’re building up the ability to do this same kind of piecing together and analysing in any other arena, from working for technology companies like Google, to marketing firms like Momentum, or even when reading a newspaper report or twitter post.

How do I find good-quality scholarship for my specific assignment or project?

• Your Module Reading List. Your module convenor has created a list of publications specifically relevant to the module you are taking, so this is always a good place to start for relevant material.
• CLAS Resource Guide: created by your lecturers especially for you, these guides provide basic bibliography on many topics in Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology. This should always be your first port of call when you start working on an assignment.
• Snowballing: the best research technique is not digital but manual. If you have found a piece of scholarship that is helpful and relatively recent (maybe an assigned reading from your module), you can use its references in the footnotes and/or its bibliography at the end to find more materials that might be useful. This is a very common and effective strategy (trust us, academics use it all the time!).
• Bibliographic Databases:
  • L’Année philologique (via library’s e-resources): a specialized bibliographic database of scholarly works relating to all aspects of Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. Provides abstracts and/or summarises of many items (not always in English, but you can throw the text into Google Translate for a general idea about how helpful this will be for you). Sometimes, it provides links to a digital version, but access often depends on whether our library has a subscription to that specific journal or e-book.
  • Gnomon Bibliographische Datenbank / Bibliographic Database (OpenAccess online): like L’Année Philologique, but it will give you different results because it’s a different database. It’s good to use the two together.
  • TOCS-IN: a searchable raw publication data for classical studies that allows character string searches.
• Library catalogue:the library catalogue gives you suggestions for books and articles, but the results aren’t always very relevant and often gives you reviews rather than the real article or book. This is not the best search tool.
• The Internet: when deciding to look for bibliography, your immediate reaction will inevitably be to do a Google or Bing search. This is not bad in and of itself, but search engines turn up all they can find when what you want it material filtered for quality. Search engines will, for example, include a lot of blogs and personal websites. Fortunately, there are tools and strategies available that allow you to limit your search to publications that meet the criteria mentioned above. Additionally, you can use the following resources with caution:
  • Google Scholar: this is a slimmed down version of the Google search engine, only looking for scientific and scholarly papers and publications. Where possible, it links to a digital version of the paper. However, the results aren’t always very relevant. You should exercise caution in using papers that are available digitally, because Google can’t always distinguish non-peer reviewed material, drafts, other works in progress, or outright crazy stuff that people are trying to pass off as scholarship. When making use of this, look for signs that indicate that some quality control has taken place, and (as always!) stay critical as you read.
  • Google Books is a searchable database of books, including academic ones, some of which are partly or entirely readable online.
  • academia.edu, researchgate.net, philpapers.org: often used by scholars to post PDFs of their publications. Most of the stuff there is just fine, but some people use it to post stuff that’s absolutely bonkers, so stay critical as you read.

How do I know which sort of scholarship to use? How do I know it’s ‘good’?

Generally speaking, this is up to you to decide. If you have used your module reading list, snowballing from articles you’ve been assigned, or the CLAS Resource Guide, you can be confident that the material you are using is good quality, but it’s up to you to decide how relevant it is to your argument. Anything that is relevant and forms a meaningful contribution to the debate should be considered for inclusion. You do need to make reasonable efforts to ensure that you are looking at first-rate material that is current and not outdated. You also need to avoid people’s personal musings or fringe activism.

DOs:

• Pay attention to the Publisher. University Presses and well established Publishing Houses are a good starting point. Use books/e-books, book chapters, journal articles, encyclopedias, and databases that have been produced by a University Press or publishers like Allen & Unwin, Routledge, Bloomsbury, Brepols, Brill, Wiley-Blackwell, among many, many others. The reason for focusing on this traditional material is that its quality has been vetted through a rigorous scholarly assessment process known as peer review. This means that other scholars have looked at the material and said that the argument is sound and represents a scholarly contribution to the field (even if they may disagree with the conclusion). This material often requires a subscription, and the library provides access to much of it (you’ll usually have to use your Kent log in). Important repositories of peer reviewed material are JSTOR and Project Muse.
• Start with RECENT Scholarship. Though antiquity is a long time ago, new evidence is discovered regularly, and understandings of the ancient world have changed over time. Remember your aim is to enter the current debate, so for studies of the ancient world, focus on material that has been published from 1960 onwards. Scholarship published before 1960 is often still very useful, but you’ll need to think much more carefully about whether that is really the most up-to-date stuff available.

DON’Ts:

• Avoid material published before 1960 (unless you have a very, very good reason). Be careful about material that was published a long time ago, even if it underwent peer review. It is often tempting to use articles that are free on JSTOR without logging in because it’s so easy to access them. But in most cases, these are pieces for which the copyright has expired, which means they are likely to date to the 1930s or earlier. This means that there is a very real risk that they are (partly) outdated.**An important exception is the Loeb Classical Library (LCL), which still features a number of early 20th-century translations of classical works; just make sure to use the official LCL online (to which the University has a subscription).
• Avoid resources like Wikipedia, whose quality control is not focused on scholarly quality. For example, Wikipedia may be a good place to find out about the first year a TV show aired, but it does not engage in peer review and allows anyone to edit. You can edit right now if you want! Do not cite Wikipedia, but, if you use it, chase up its sources and check those (and check their date!).Use the Oxford Classical Dictionary Online instead. It is easy to access, written by world-leading experts on the subject, is peer-reviewed, and we pay for you to access it! Also be careful with television documentaries and popularizing publications.
• Avoid blog or social media posts. Most of the people who write these are not academics and do not have the appropriate credentials for academic writing.
• Avoid relying on friends, family, or acquaintances as ‘oral sources’. An ‘oral source’ is someone who was an eyewitness to the events you’re discussing. No eyewitnesses, and thus no ‘oral sources’, survive from antiquity.
• Avoid citing what your lecturer said during class, and do not cite the powerpoint presentations or lecture video clips. We provide you with information in class that can be varified in peer-reviewed sources, so find them and cite them (a good place to start is the readings assigned for the week in which the lecture you want to use was given!)

You are not expected to read scholarship in German, French, or Italian, but you are welcome to do so if you know any of these languages.

I have found potentially relevant material, but the library doesn’t provide access. What do I do now?

This happens a lot to all of us. A single library can’t own everything. There are two steps you can take.

First, you’ll have to make an informed guess whether the piece of bibliography is relevant enough for you to take the trouble of obtaining it. If you are looking for a:

• Journal Article: try to find an abstract / summary. This may be available through L’Année Philologique but note that the journal or publisher website often provides abstracts for free or allows you to view the first page.
• Book or Book Chapter: look for a book review in reputable journal (See the current awareness page in the CLAS Resource Guide, or try review journals like Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR) or Classical Review). Book reviews often contain extensive summaries of the contents, usually chapter by chapter. This will give a fairly good impression of what is being argued and may save you a lot of time. Reviews in BMCR are quite detailed and openly and freely accessible online. Alternatively, publisher websites occasionally provide abstracts, but this is not very common for books and book chapters.

Second, once you’ve decided you absolutely need to read the entire piece, here are some ways you might try to obtain it:

• Search the JSTOR Archive. You have the option of creating a personal account that allows you to read up to 5-ish pieces a month for free (note that you cannot download them). It’s wise to be stingy with this so that you have enough views for when there is an emergency. Try this by searching once you’re inside JSTOR: the material will not come up via the library catalogue.
• Check the Author’s University webpage. Find out whether the author’s page on their university website provides a digital version. Sometimes their university library keeps a digital repository.
• Ask your lecturers if they have a copy. We have accumulated a lot of material in our careers, and may have what you need.
• Document Delivery / Interlibrary Loan. If you still cannot obtain what you need, you can request a digital copy via Document Delivery on the library website. Articles and book chapters are usually sent electronically. If you need a full book, they will get you a physical copy. Note that it will take at least 2 weeks, usually longer, before you receive your order, so this is not for last-minute emergencies. The university will allow you 3 to 5 orders per year for free, but it is not always the case that books, in particular, are available. To find this option, perform a search on the library catalogue. Then, click on “document delivery request” at the top of the right hand side of the page.

How do I engage critically with scholars when I write?

It is most important that you engage with what others have argued in a way that is lucid (clearly written), fair (avoid partial or misleading representations of what others have said), and focused on the arguments/evidence rather than on the person who wrote them.

Lucid. Use simple language to explain a scholar’s point. You don’t need to use big words to sound smart. We always value clarity over pomp. It can often help to write an outline of another scholar’s argument, so that you can make sure you’ve understood their point.

Fair. Make sure you understand the argument. After outlining the argument, read carefully to make sure you understand how they are using the evidence and engaging with scholarship. Another great thing to do is present a criticism (your argument) and then provide a response (a counterargument) on behalf of the author you are criticising. Doing this shows that you have understood their position, and that you’re treating them with respect by thinking about the implications of what they have written.

Try not to let disapproval or frustration lead you to write passive aggressive dismissals! We should assume that everyone tried their best to say something meaningful and that they may have spent a lot of time researching and writing their work. More importantly, if you believe that someone made a weak argument, that does not mean that the person is weak or stupid.

Focus on the Argument. The goal is always to improve understanding and advance scholarship, not to attack and destroy people. Personal takedowns used to be more common in academia, but it’s not appropriate these days. We’re all working together to advance knowledge and understanding. So if you encounter anything of this type in the scholarship you’re reading, that’s no reason to engage in it yourself.

There is another danger to focusing too much on the person in assessing scholarship, and this has to do with relying on someone’s reputation. Keep in mind that even the most well-respected scholars make mistakes and might have misunderstood things or missed a key piece of evidence. The fact that someone is often right and that their work has been influential doesn’t mean they are always right. Every individual argument that is being proposed needs to be assessed on its own merits. By focusing on how the piece of scholarship analyzes and interprets the evidence, you’ll stay focused on the argumentation rather than the person. And, of course, the same holds for scholars with a poor reputation: it doesn’t mean that they are always wrong.

What do I do if someone has argued something that I think is wrong?

It is great (really!) if you disagree with what others have said about a certain topic, if you can give good reasons for it. These reasons usually take the form of arguments supported by evidence.

It is also perfectly fine to agree with other scholars, if you explain why they are right (once again, think in terms of arguments supported by evidence).

In either case, it’s always a good sign of intellectual engagement when you offer an argument against someone’s position, to offer a response to your criticism on their behalf. This demonstrates that you have understand their ideas and have thought through the implications of them.

And don’t forget (!!) if someone has made a really good and perceptive point, make sure you give them credit for their ideas. This is what in-text or footnote references are for and helps you avoid plagiarism!

Can I use formulations such as “I” and “in my view” in my academic writing?

Yes! As a university student you are expected to have opinions of your own about the ancient world, and to defend them with evidence and analysis.

Many of you have probably been instructed in school to avoid “I” or “me” in essays at almost any cost. The reason why this is done in school is to avoid overly subjective points of view, which tend to be unconvincing. At University level (in the Humanities), however, it is perfectly fine to use expressions such as “I think”, “I will argue that”, “I disagree because”, “I wish to show that”, etc.

It is also a form of honesty, because it is you who are making an argument or proposing a new interpretation of the evidence. And it’s also you who are disagreeing with the other scholar (and you may persuade your readers to disagree as well, but that’s not entirely in your control).

What’s more, in the interest of lucidity, it is often extremely helpful to use formulations that involve “I”. An example:

“Scholar X has argued that Nero did not like fish sauce. However, on the basis of a careful examination of the evidence, I will argue that it is in fact very likely that he was addicted to it.”

However, in academic writing you should continue to AVOID language about what you “believe” or what you “feel”. Your beliefs and feelings are important, but they aren’t relevant to an academic argument (and it is often these sorts of sentiments that led your schoolteachers to ban “I” in essays in the first place). We are all interested in what you can argue and what you think, but your beliefs and feelings are your own and not relevant to your academic work.