Theater 110: Introduction to Theater

Often your instructors will ask you to find scholarly sources.  But what makes a source "schloarly"?

PEER REVIEW!

Scholarly sources have been read and critiqued by multiple experts before they have been published. This process helps researchers know the information in these sources should be reliable.

The basic process is:

1. The author creates their research project and submits it to a publisher.
2. The publisher sends the research to the Peer Reviewers, usually 3 or 4. (Reviewers don't get paid, FYI.)
3. The reviewers send their feedback.  They can say "Accept the research as is," or "Don't accept this at all," or "Ask the reviewer to revise these changes and then resubmit."  Revise and resubmit is very common.
4. The publisher tells the author whether the research is accepted, rejected, or needs revision.
5. Assuming the research needs revision, the researcher does the revising.
6. The research is published.

As you can imagine, this process can take a long time. That's why, if you are trying to find scholarly research on a brand new movie, book, play, or piece of music, you often won't be able to find it. There just hasn't been enough time for peer review yet!

Here's a great infographic from the librarians at the University of Toronto-Scarborough describing the differences between scholarly and popular sources!