Another week, another topic! This time I found the theme more hands-on to what we may deploy when we conduct our thesis work and whatnot. It was all about discussing the concept of theory and theory in scientific articles. Somewhat more of the kind of work that I expected from this course before it started.
My spontaneous reaction to this week's theme is that it was very useful. I have witnessed a lot of confusion about what theory really is when people have written scientific texts here at KTH, not to say the least in regards of the thesis work we performed in the third grade. I have seen texts that has used the heading "theory" with a lot of content variations. I must admit that even I myself did not have an entirely sure idea about what theory really was, and what theory was not, before this week's theme. I must therefore say that I was very pleased with it. I believe it will prove to bring some clarity into the text formulation of my upcoming master thesis.
I believe that the seminars served their purpose as they brought further understanding to the concept. I think that it is always a good idea to get concrete examples of applied concepts, just as we got by discussing the different articles that we chose. The specific methodology of which we were asked to use in order to find our articles is also something that I may bring with me to my upcoming thesis work. Firstly, simply just looking at journal titles generally gives a great idea of what type of articles you may find in the specific journal. But also (and this is something that I have not been laying too much focus on before) looking at the impact factor of the journal gives a good idea of how much quality the journal is perceived to possess. That is a factor that I will definitely take with me into future text productions.
The article I chose was about the phenomenon of digital divides, a topic that I found interesting to read about in itself. I therefore found the "burden of reading" this week to be of more joy rather than burden. I therefore hope we get the chance to choose some more texts of our own in the upcoming weeks as well. I think a mix of conceptual texts for the week's theme, tied together with some text which you get to pick by yourself - like this week - was a great way to go.
How much do you guys take the impact factor into account when you write academic texts? Do you perceive that professors generally value journals differently when grading?
SvaraRaderaHi Torbjörn! I think that you have post a really interesting question. As for me, I don't really take into account the impact factor. Of course I write about the main and influential theories, but I also mention some theories which I find interesting, without taking the impact factor into account.
SvaraRaderaHello Ekaterina! Interesting to hear! I would say that I work very much the same. However, I have now noticed that I glance at the impact factor before I dig into a journal, after having this particular theme in this course. I do not know if that is a good or a bad thing. It might hinder me from looking deeper into some journals which then might have some golden articles that I therefore miss, but still it might provide me with a better chance of providing high quality data.
SvaraRadera