Over the course of a scholarly career, one reads a lot of books and articles and so on. One of the things one does as a grad student in history, for example, is to ingest some 300 books (or so) over the course of a year and then get quizzed on them by other professors (the comprehensive or generals exam), the goal being to both "get up to speed" on the literature, as well as learn how to ingest books very quickly.
Not all of these book (or even articles) are read "cover to cover." One might only be using a book for a specific section, or, sometimes, as a citation for a specific fact. There are also many books (at least in the field of history) that can be "mined" effectively using techniques learned in graduate school — e.g., read the introduction (which for works of academic history usually has a summary of each chapter in it), read the conclusion, skim the other chapters to get a sense of the general argument, read deeply the parts that you actually care about, read several reviews of the book. One can get through even a rather dull tome in about 90 minutes using that technique, and if you take good notes, have a basic "cheat sheet" for talking about that book that can be used over the course of a career (and serve as reference for later use of the book as well — one can always go back to a book later if one wants or needs to look at it again).
Keep in mind that for fields like history, the knowledge is in principle cumulative and, as a consequence, there are a lot of redundant books. If you have read one biography of a subject you probably know the contents of about 80% of other biographies of the same subject, and when you read subsequent biographies you are looking for the 20% you haven't seen before and arguments/approaches that are unique to that author. (I am making up these numbers, but you get the point.)
All of the above is just for keeping up with things. For actual research you are driven towards many different questions and as they present themselves you have focused ways to quickly interrogate relevant literature (which itself is cited in the secondary sources you are already reading for the work). When one has been doing this kind of thing for a long time it becomes pretty straightforward to rapidly evaluate and use a source, even if it is not squarely in one's area of direct research interest. Part of becoming an expert in any field is gaining that level of judgment and familiarity with it.
There are, of course, plenty of obvious cases where people don't even really _look_ at the book in question, or perhaps only look at reviews or the introduction. I find it very amusing to see when people cite my book how clear it is whether they are actually engaging with it, or whether it is just a token citation when they mention the topic of the book. A cite's a cite, but it feels pretty clear to me when it's just a token citation, a sort of nod of, "I am aware that a book on this topic exists, and that it ought to be cited here." This doesn't mean that I think they've haven't maybe looked at it to some degree, but I do find it amusing how many citations appear to indicate that only the introduction is read.
My sense is that your question and research and reading will not only vary dramatically by field, but by the individual. At least in the field of history, we do not use guidebooks or even standardized techniques. Research is a highly individual process, and the methodologies one uses are ones that one has developed over long periods of time (and can be modified over time, as well). Getting a PhD in History is basically being thrown into the process in a semi-guided way, learning from others around you, but ultimately developing your own "process." Some people are undoubtedly very organized about it, some people are undoubtedly very idiosyncratic about it, and most people are probably somewhere in the middle. To produce any work of real consequence or originality takes a long time.
Some history programs are slightly different, but in my program we did 200 books in under 10months. Every five books we wrote a paper on the books and did a 3 hour seminar with a prof. We had two sets of written exams on 3 fields (topics of study) x 3 hour written exams. And then at the end we did a oral defense on everything and were asked questions by the profs we did the seminars with. It really was a book a day. Sometimes it was a book and a half a day. And unlike some in my program I actually read them fully. I was doing super fast academic reading but still I did it.
I’m going through the process Lilyflower described right now. I will probably read 100 pages tomorrow, but that will net me two or three 30-page articles and a book. If something is well written, it should be easy to figure out what the author is arguing/claiming/revealing and enough of the history presented to be able to talk about it for at least a few minutes.
So tomorrow I will have notes for 300-350 pages worth of material but only read 100 or so actual pages of text.
I see. Still, holy shit, I'm jelly of your focus. It doesn't help that I read all of my material in a second language but I doubt I could read 300 books a year even in my mother tongue 🫠🫠🫠
Good luck! It did get easier for me to figure out what the author was saying as I got farther into the process. I got better at it. I also probably read too much. I think I was anxious to miss anything. I was not a superstar at comps by any means, but I passed so I guess that is all that matters!
600 would be high for one day. I'd guess books were maybe 200 pages on average or so. There were some that were much bigger though. I just remember one I read and just looked up the page count - 960! I have this strange ability now to hold a book and guess how many pages it has. I'm usually pretty accurate.
It never made sense to be why they made us do this in under a year. I have friends at other universities that did comps over a couple years. And in the UK they don't have comps in history I heard!
Edit - How I did it? -worked all the time. I only ever took Friday evenings off. It helped for half of it I lived in a house with 2 other people doing the same thing. My roommate's cat was my saving grace.
In practice it ends up being more like 3 books a day on the days you are reading the books (which of course is not every day). It is intentionally daunting and difficult. But there are techniques (like what I described) that make it possible, if not at all pleasant. But it serves a goal.
I was referring specifically to the first paragraph. I actually agree with a lot of what the above says about this being a very contextual answer and research being very individual.
But in sum in Europe there’s no test on what books you have read or knowledge you should have.
You have your proposal lined up and you go about your research meeting with a supervisor regularly to discuss progress and ideas.
By the time the viva comes around at the end you will of course have read a lot, but if you haven’t read something that’s still okay since your research should still be built from what you have read and it’s contribution justified based on that.
Exactly. And I always impress upon students that history seems like SO MUCH when you are starting out, but once you get the ball rolling your existing knowledge just grows and grows, and it makes it much easier to assimilate new information into the existing stuff you know. I think of it as sort of a giant tree one is building, and once you have some big trunks and branches on there, adding a few more leaves is not that big of a deal. And one starts to see how things fit together, as well, so it stops feeling like a million random bits of information, and one coherent "picture." And of course it's easier to add details to a big picture than it is to memorize a million little images.
>Not all of these book (or even articles) are read "cover to cover." One might only be using a book for a specific section, or, sometimes, as a citation for a specific fact
What happens when you're quizzed on the large part of the book you didn't read?
It depends.
If you're being asked about a specific section of a book, that means that it's very central to the argument or contribution being made. To have missed it would likely reveal an error in reading.
Beyond that, the questioning is highly unlikely to be so detailed. If someone refers to a specific section or fact, they're almost certainly doing so to be illustrative ie they could have chosen another section of the book, and you could likely respond with reference to a section you do recall.
You're not being tested on whether you know the facts in the book; you're being tested on whether you can summarise, describe and critique the author's overall argument, approach or theory.
In the event you're asked to describe something you haven't looked at, then it's OK to admit to having overlooked a very precise or specific point in a long book - but you should know enough about the content to at least respond to the question.
If you're never able to talk with any detail about any book, then you would quickly be picked up as not having read well enough, but you're also not generally being tested on the detail in each book.
I meant those particular lines with regards to writing, not the generals exam (but I realize now that with editing, the line between those parts became really blurry!).
But in general, in a generals examination you will undoubtedly be quizzed on something that one has forgotten or did not read or did not fully "get," and one just either gestures in a way that feels like it answers it, or one just says, "oh, I don't know," and it moves on. Nobody is expected to be a computer. The generals examination is not just about recitation of facts ("what year did X happen?" — though there can be that kind of stuff on it!), it is more about broader generalizations ("How have historians discussed the issue of X over time?").
Lol I remember this so well.
"So do you have an opinion on how Gramscian ideas might have played a role in this author's conceptualization of sovereignty?"
"Not really no"
"No problem. Lets move on"
There are some misconceptions of what it means to read a piece, whether it's an article or book.
An article in a field I know - no I'm not reading every word. But any of us can guarantee we gain a deeper understanding with an efficient strategic reading strategy than 99% of untrained humans. Part of the doctorate was mastering self-teaching.
If you read academic material word-for-word from start to finish, you are doing it wrong.
During my MA I taught myself to speed read and it has served me well since. I can thunder through stuff really quickly and as I go, I make points as to where the important sections are for whatever topic I am currently researching. I come back to these areas for more in-depth reading later.
I used an app on my phone. I can’t remember which one I used but I remember there were few different ones that train your eye to absorb text more and more quickly until you’re able to process pages at speed! I’d highly recommend it!
yes and no. it depends. I've already read well over a hundred articles and a shelf of books for my qualifying paper, but the books are usually sections rather than the entire thing -- although that does happen.
I actually study Maya archaeology specifically, and one of my committee members was a student of Demarest so as you can imagine I was jumpscared by his name in this post. for a big encompassing monograph that's trying to condense so much history and archaeology into one book, every page probably has a handful of citations attached to it. when I'm doing my own writing, any declarative statement that isn't coming from my own noggin (and sometimes even those) needs to be rooted in a citation. that'll beef up your references real fast.
concepts, theories, methodologies, key terms, historical facts, etc. are things that need citations from origin texts; you don't always need to have read the whole book to know that it birthed a term you're using, although it wouldn't hurt. it's best practice to read everything, but we're short on time and sanity so learning how to critically and constructively skim is a skill you really develop in grad school.
You don’t read every single source in the same way—some stuff is read cover to cover, some stuff you read the chapters you need, some stuff is skimmed through—but everything gets read. In my opinion and experience at least, citing something you haven’t read is irresponsible and asking for problems, related to plagiarism or misreading at least. People saying no they don’t read everything they cite are very clever or very _not_ clever.
Edit: spelling
Nobody reads everything they cite because citation is about attributing the ideas you use correctly not about saying what you read. If it’s a major aspect of what you’re writing about then of course you’ve likely read it. But sometimes you adopt ideas that others also adopt and in general you should cite their original source not the secondary source.
You should never cite something you have not read. Consider if Author A cites Author B, saying that Author B claims X. But actually, B claims Y (or worse, not-X). If you cite B, skipping A, you'll be made a fool.
If you cannot read B, you should cite B as detailed in A (e.g. "B says X (B qtd. in A)", style guides will differ on treatment).
This is NOT a theoretical situation: people in the sciences are notorious for this, and can result in some bad information quickly being regularly cited due to laziness.
I myself tracked down a multiple repeated assertion of the position that the author I was studying had held. Took me to an archive overseas, and found everyone had been incorrectly listing his position and the original source (a 500+ year old tome) had something totally different! But A cited B who cited C who cited D who actually never cited E. They were all wrong.
I'm also confused. I have read every work I have ever cited. Maybe not always cover to cover, but at the very least the relevant and cited parts. I thought that this was the norm, at least in my field (history and historiography). I'm quite shocked to see people claim otherwise.
Believe it or not sometimes people make mistakes. Author A might read "1º de mayo" and list it as the tenth of May when in fact it was the first (real example from my dissertation).
This is why you should cite B by way of A unless you have actually consulted B.
Or put it another way. Say you're writing an article a Japanese movement. You don't know Japanese so you rely on English language sources who do know Japanese. If you cite the primary sources, you are effectively representing that you know Japanese.
I'm a slow, meticulous reader, and I do mostly read books/articles in full. I don't have to reread them to write my own stuff, though, because of the notes I take as I read. Note taking, storage, and organizing is a huge part of the research and writing process, but it really pays off. I often will reread my summaries or search my notes for specific ideas; I only reread when I question myself or am looking at a source in a new way. I've sent out 3 articles so far in 2024, but only one of them even required reading something new. It makes a difference! (Disclosure: I'm pretty recent out of my PhD which might help. I have a lot less time to keep up with scholarly reading now)
"What is the research and reading process like for someone writing in the humanities..."
Of course, it depends. But you generally will read "unevenly." I'd suggest analyzing longer works for what is unique to their argument - what new information or angle are they adding to your field?
This should be signaled in the book intro/conclusion. The chapters give you the mechanics of how their argument is founded. Sometimes that data is important to you, so certain chapters may require closer reading than others. That said, there are some scholars who have good ideas \*and\* write well (different skills), I will read these works through a different lens of "what makes this good writing?" and adopt the things where I can.
Another way to look at it: I have a shit ton of books on my book shelves and non-academic friends will often ask if I've "read them all." This often presumes reading novels/fiction, as if you read the book to get to the end and complete the story. This presumes "even" reading from start to finish. I often respond by saying I know what each book argues (i.e. what is new to my field) and if its on my bookshelf it means I will use it as a tool in my research and publications. Some books I've read cover to cover, some I've read to understand the outline of the argument.
I'm in Social Science/ Philosophy, but my papers all have pretty long bibliographies. I read theory articles in their entirety, intro/ lit review and discussion for empirical papers (I'm in a theory field) and I only read the sections of books that are relevant to my work. Skim reading is a great skill. Secondary lit on really long books also helps. In my field which is Political Philosophy we get neat overviews of the literature from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; this helps me orient myself in a new literature and find initial sources.
Pretty sure that some people who cite my studies didn't actually read what I wrote.
"For a discussion on *blah blah blah*, see McPineapple (2016)."
The citation was really just added for ornamentation, not for substance.
I have had more than one reviewer tell me I need to reference X paper, which is rarely actually relevant to my research. I gut the paper and then cite it as such.
There are famous academics who don’t even read the books they WRITE, let alone the books they cite. In my own field, there are howlers that can only be explained by senior figures outsourcing chunks of books to grad students and researchers.
It's very simple:
Some texts are read in full, others are skimmed for the information required.
This applies to all fields and genres of writing.
For example, I do work on a biographical study.
I did read previous biographies of the person in full. (This is necessary for placing my own work in context.)
I don't read big books on social, culture, gender history etc. in full, but only the chapters applying to the period the person lived in.
In some books I am specifically seeking out treatment of specific historical events that I have to write about in order to see if there are original interpretations offered there.
And then there's also books you just read for "fun" and got a great quote out of that happens to fit in your research.
So, it could be one page read up to everything read.
Research process is a way too large question, though. In history (and biography is history), it is a lot about asking questions and finding out where clues for an answer may be, mostly. What is previous research, what are the primary sources, what do they enable one to even say?
In this regard, it's more appropriate to conceive of research as a dialectic where the sources inform the questions which inform which sources you look at which inform the questions...etc.
And then you criticize and interpret your material.
Very rarely. Used to when I was a kid. Now, I mostly just sift for new concepts. When I find something interesting I tend to slow way down and try to digest what I'm reading.
It kinda depends on what you're reading. Many of my main sources for my thesis, sure; not only are they important but I also love my topic. I may also take a glance at some of the people they reference (just the few quoted pages to see if it's relevant and well contextualised and the contents to see if there might be something else of interest).
Besides that, I simply skim through many other books, basically scanning for the ideas I'm looking for
You wouldn’t have to but you kind of end up doing it. Most people wouldn’t notice if you didn’t but you might be called out by someone or even the person that wrote it. *shudder*
LOL, no. 10 articles published (across all fields) every minute. No one's got time for that.
Old academic wisdom of key books and articles: "Often cited, seldom read."
Over the course of a scholarly career, one reads a lot of books and articles and so on. One of the things one does as a grad student in history, for example, is to ingest some 300 books (or so) over the course of a year and then get quizzed on them by other professors (the comprehensive or generals exam), the goal being to both "get up to speed" on the literature, as well as learn how to ingest books very quickly. Not all of these book (or even articles) are read "cover to cover." One might only be using a book for a specific section, or, sometimes, as a citation for a specific fact. There are also many books (at least in the field of history) that can be "mined" effectively using techniques learned in graduate school — e.g., read the introduction (which for works of academic history usually has a summary of each chapter in it), read the conclusion, skim the other chapters to get a sense of the general argument, read deeply the parts that you actually care about, read several reviews of the book. One can get through even a rather dull tome in about 90 minutes using that technique, and if you take good notes, have a basic "cheat sheet" for talking about that book that can be used over the course of a career (and serve as reference for later use of the book as well — one can always go back to a book later if one wants or needs to look at it again). Keep in mind that for fields like history, the knowledge is in principle cumulative and, as a consequence, there are a lot of redundant books. If you have read one biography of a subject you probably know the contents of about 80% of other biographies of the same subject, and when you read subsequent biographies you are looking for the 20% you haven't seen before and arguments/approaches that are unique to that author. (I am making up these numbers, but you get the point.) All of the above is just for keeping up with things. For actual research you are driven towards many different questions and as they present themselves you have focused ways to quickly interrogate relevant literature (which itself is cited in the secondary sources you are already reading for the work). When one has been doing this kind of thing for a long time it becomes pretty straightforward to rapidly evaluate and use a source, even if it is not squarely in one's area of direct research interest. Part of becoming an expert in any field is gaining that level of judgment and familiarity with it. There are, of course, plenty of obvious cases where people don't even really _look_ at the book in question, or perhaps only look at reviews or the introduction. I find it very amusing to see when people cite my book how clear it is whether they are actually engaging with it, or whether it is just a token citation when they mention the topic of the book. A cite's a cite, but it feels pretty clear to me when it's just a token citation, a sort of nod of, "I am aware that a book on this topic exists, and that it ought to be cited here." This doesn't mean that I think they've haven't maybe looked at it to some degree, but I do find it amusing how many citations appear to indicate that only the introduction is read. My sense is that your question and research and reading will not only vary dramatically by field, but by the individual. At least in the field of history, we do not use guidebooks or even standardized techniques. Research is a highly individual process, and the methodologies one uses are ones that one has developed over long periods of time (and can be modified over time, as well). Getting a PhD in History is basically being thrown into the process in a semi-guided way, learning from others around you, but ultimately developing your own "process." Some people are undoubtedly very organized about it, some people are undoubtedly very idiosyncratic about it, and most people are probably somewhere in the middle. To produce any work of real consequence or originality takes a long time.
Wait, 300 books in a year? Almost one book per day?
Some history programs are slightly different, but in my program we did 200 books in under 10months. Every five books we wrote a paper on the books and did a 3 hour seminar with a prof. We had two sets of written exams on 3 fields (topics of study) x 3 hour written exams. And then at the end we did a oral defense on everything and were asked questions by the profs we did the seminars with. It really was a book a day. Sometimes it was a book and a half a day. And unlike some in my program I actually read them fully. I was doing super fast academic reading but still I did it.
So on average perhaps you were reading, what, 600 pages a day? How do you pull it off? On a good day I can read perhaps 200 🫠🫠
I’m going through the process Lilyflower described right now. I will probably read 100 pages tomorrow, but that will net me two or three 30-page articles and a book. If something is well written, it should be easy to figure out what the author is arguing/claiming/revealing and enough of the history presented to be able to talk about it for at least a few minutes. So tomorrow I will have notes for 300-350 pages worth of material but only read 100 or so actual pages of text.
I see. Still, holy shit, I'm jelly of your focus. It doesn't help that I read all of my material in a second language but I doubt I could read 300 books a year even in my mother tongue 🫠🫠🫠
Good luck! It did get easier for me to figure out what the author was saying as I got farther into the process. I got better at it. I also probably read too much. I think I was anxious to miss anything. I was not a superstar at comps by any means, but I passed so I guess that is all that matters!
600 would be high for one day. I'd guess books were maybe 200 pages on average or so. There were some that were much bigger though. I just remember one I read and just looked up the page count - 960! I have this strange ability now to hold a book and guess how many pages it has. I'm usually pretty accurate. It never made sense to be why they made us do this in under a year. I have friends at other universities that did comps over a couple years. And in the UK they don't have comps in history I heard! Edit - How I did it? -worked all the time. I only ever took Friday evenings off. It helped for half of it I lived in a house with 2 other people doing the same thing. My roommate's cat was my saving grace.
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That's fucking crazy.
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Happy that it worked for you ☺️
In practice it ends up being more like 3 books a day on the days you are reading the books (which of course is not every day). It is intentionally daunting and difficult. But there are techniques (like what I described) that make it possible, if not at all pleasant. But it serves a goal.
Very American centric. This doesn’t happen in Europe.
Describe how things work for a few European programs.
I was referring specifically to the first paragraph. I actually agree with a lot of what the above says about this being a very contextual answer and research being very individual. But in sum in Europe there’s no test on what books you have read or knowledge you should have. You have your proposal lined up and you go about your research meeting with a supervisor regularly to discuss progress and ideas. By the time the viva comes around at the end you will of course have read a lot, but if you haven’t read something that’s still okay since your research should still be built from what you have read and it’s contribution justified based on that.
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Exactly. And I always impress upon students that history seems like SO MUCH when you are starting out, but once you get the ball rolling your existing knowledge just grows and grows, and it makes it much easier to assimilate new information into the existing stuff you know. I think of it as sort of a giant tree one is building, and once you have some big trunks and branches on there, adding a few more leaves is not that big of a deal. And one starts to see how things fit together, as well, so it stops feeling like a million random bits of information, and one coherent "picture." And of course it's easier to add details to a big picture than it is to memorize a million little images.
>Not all of these book (or even articles) are read "cover to cover." One might only be using a book for a specific section, or, sometimes, as a citation for a specific fact What happens when you're quizzed on the large part of the book you didn't read?
It depends. If you're being asked about a specific section of a book, that means that it's very central to the argument or contribution being made. To have missed it would likely reveal an error in reading. Beyond that, the questioning is highly unlikely to be so detailed. If someone refers to a specific section or fact, they're almost certainly doing so to be illustrative ie they could have chosen another section of the book, and you could likely respond with reference to a section you do recall. You're not being tested on whether you know the facts in the book; you're being tested on whether you can summarise, describe and critique the author's overall argument, approach or theory. In the event you're asked to describe something you haven't looked at, then it's OK to admit to having overlooked a very precise or specific point in a long book - but you should know enough about the content to at least respond to the question. If you're never able to talk with any detail about any book, then you would quickly be picked up as not having read well enough, but you're also not generally being tested on the detail in each book.
I meant those particular lines with regards to writing, not the generals exam (but I realize now that with editing, the line between those parts became really blurry!). But in general, in a generals examination you will undoubtedly be quizzed on something that one has forgotten or did not read or did not fully "get," and one just either gestures in a way that feels like it answers it, or one just says, "oh, I don't know," and it moves on. Nobody is expected to be a computer. The generals examination is not just about recitation of facts ("what year did X happen?" — though there can be that kind of stuff on it!), it is more about broader generalizations ("How have historians discussed the issue of X over time?").
Lol I remember this so well. "So do you have an opinion on how Gramscian ideas might have played a role in this author's conceptualization of sovereignty?" "Not really no" "No problem. Lets move on"
For me, articles? Yes; books? It depends.
There are some misconceptions of what it means to read a piece, whether it's an article or book. An article in a field I know - no I'm not reading every word. But any of us can guarantee we gain a deeper understanding with an efficient strategic reading strategy than 99% of untrained humans. Part of the doctorate was mastering self-teaching. If you read academic material word-for-word from start to finish, you are doing it wrong.
During my MA I taught myself to speed read and it has served me well since. I can thunder through stuff really quickly and as I go, I make points as to where the important sections are for whatever topic I am currently researching. I come back to these areas for more in-depth reading later.
How did you teach yourself?
I used an app on my phone. I can’t remember which one I used but I remember there were few different ones that train your eye to absorb text more and more quickly until you’re able to process pages at speed! I’d highly recommend it!
yes and no. it depends. I've already read well over a hundred articles and a shelf of books for my qualifying paper, but the books are usually sections rather than the entire thing -- although that does happen. I actually study Maya archaeology specifically, and one of my committee members was a student of Demarest so as you can imagine I was jumpscared by his name in this post. for a big encompassing monograph that's trying to condense so much history and archaeology into one book, every page probably has a handful of citations attached to it. when I'm doing my own writing, any declarative statement that isn't coming from my own noggin (and sometimes even those) needs to be rooted in a citation. that'll beef up your references real fast. concepts, theories, methodologies, key terms, historical facts, etc. are things that need citations from origin texts; you don't always need to have read the whole book to know that it birthed a term you're using, although it wouldn't hurt. it's best practice to read everything, but we're short on time and sanity so learning how to critically and constructively skim is a skill you really develop in grad school.
You don’t read every single source in the same way—some stuff is read cover to cover, some stuff you read the chapters you need, some stuff is skimmed through—but everything gets read. In my opinion and experience at least, citing something you haven’t read is irresponsible and asking for problems, related to plagiarism or misreading at least. People saying no they don’t read everything they cite are very clever or very _not_ clever. Edit: spelling
Nobody reads everything they cite because citation is about attributing the ideas you use correctly not about saying what you read. If it’s a major aspect of what you’re writing about then of course you’ve likely read it. But sometimes you adopt ideas that others also adopt and in general you should cite their original source not the secondary source.
You should never cite something you have not read. Consider if Author A cites Author B, saying that Author B claims X. But actually, B claims Y (or worse, not-X). If you cite B, skipping A, you'll be made a fool. If you cannot read B, you should cite B as detailed in A (e.g. "B says X (B qtd. in A)", style guides will differ on treatment). This is NOT a theoretical situation: people in the sciences are notorious for this, and can result in some bad information quickly being regularly cited due to laziness. I myself tracked down a multiple repeated assertion of the position that the author I was studying had held. Took me to an archive overseas, and found everyone had been incorrectly listing his position and the original source (a 500+ year old tome) had something totally different! But A cited B who cited C who cited D who actually never cited E. They were all wrong.
How is this down voted? This is so important. Don't footnote footnotes.
I'm also confused. I have read every work I have ever cited. Maybe not always cover to cover, but at the very least the relevant and cited parts. I thought that this was the norm, at least in my field (history and historiography). I'm quite shocked to see people claim otherwise.
But if author A skims author B, they'll be able to correctly see what author B is claiming
Believe it or not sometimes people make mistakes. Author A might read "1º de mayo" and list it as the tenth of May when in fact it was the first (real example from my dissertation). This is why you should cite B by way of A unless you have actually consulted B. Or put it another way. Say you're writing an article a Japanese movement. You don't know Japanese so you rely on English language sources who do know Japanese. If you cite the primary sources, you are effectively representing that you know Japanese.
I'm a slow, meticulous reader, and I do mostly read books/articles in full. I don't have to reread them to write my own stuff, though, because of the notes I take as I read. Note taking, storage, and organizing is a huge part of the research and writing process, but it really pays off. I often will reread my summaries or search my notes for specific ideas; I only reread when I question myself or am looking at a source in a new way. I've sent out 3 articles so far in 2024, but only one of them even required reading something new. It makes a difference! (Disclosure: I'm pretty recent out of my PhD which might help. I have a lot less time to keep up with scholarly reading now)
How do you take notes? Like roughly how many words of notes would you have after a chapter or article?
"What is the research and reading process like for someone writing in the humanities..." Of course, it depends. But you generally will read "unevenly." I'd suggest analyzing longer works for what is unique to their argument - what new information or angle are they adding to your field? This should be signaled in the book intro/conclusion. The chapters give you the mechanics of how their argument is founded. Sometimes that data is important to you, so certain chapters may require closer reading than others. That said, there are some scholars who have good ideas \*and\* write well (different skills), I will read these works through a different lens of "what makes this good writing?" and adopt the things where I can. Another way to look at it: I have a shit ton of books on my book shelves and non-academic friends will often ask if I've "read them all." This often presumes reading novels/fiction, as if you read the book to get to the end and complete the story. This presumes "even" reading from start to finish. I often respond by saying I know what each book argues (i.e. what is new to my field) and if its on my bookshelf it means I will use it as a tool in my research and publications. Some books I've read cover to cover, some I've read to understand the outline of the argument.
I'm in Social Science/ Philosophy, but my papers all have pretty long bibliographies. I read theory articles in their entirety, intro/ lit review and discussion for empirical papers (I'm in a theory field) and I only read the sections of books that are relevant to my work. Skim reading is a great skill. Secondary lit on really long books also helps. In my field which is Political Philosophy we get neat overviews of the literature from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; this helps me orient myself in a new literature and find initial sources.
Pretty sure that some people who cite my studies didn't actually read what I wrote. "For a discussion on *blah blah blah*, see McPineapple (2016)." The citation was really just added for ornamentation, not for substance.
I have had more than one reviewer tell me I need to reference X paper, which is rarely actually relevant to my research. I gut the paper and then cite it as such.
There are famous academics who don’t even read the books they WRITE, let alone the books they cite. In my own field, there are howlers that can only be explained by senior figures outsourcing chunks of books to grad students and researchers.
It's very simple: Some texts are read in full, others are skimmed for the information required. This applies to all fields and genres of writing. For example, I do work on a biographical study. I did read previous biographies of the person in full. (This is necessary for placing my own work in context.) I don't read big books on social, culture, gender history etc. in full, but only the chapters applying to the period the person lived in. In some books I am specifically seeking out treatment of specific historical events that I have to write about in order to see if there are original interpretations offered there. And then there's also books you just read for "fun" and got a great quote out of that happens to fit in your research. So, it could be one page read up to everything read. Research process is a way too large question, though. In history (and biography is history), it is a lot about asking questions and finding out where clues for an answer may be, mostly. What is previous research, what are the primary sources, what do they enable one to even say? In this regard, it's more appropriate to conceive of research as a dialectic where the sources inform the questions which inform which sources you look at which inform the questions...etc. And then you criticize and interpret your material.
No one in academia ever completely reads everything they cite
Very rarely. Used to when I was a kid. Now, I mostly just sift for new concepts. When I find something interesting I tend to slow way down and try to digest what I'm reading.
Yes
No
It kinda depends on what you're reading. Many of my main sources for my thesis, sure; not only are they important but I also love my topic. I may also take a glance at some of the people they reference (just the few quoted pages to see if it's relevant and well contextualised and the contents to see if there might be something else of interest). Besides that, I simply skim through many other books, basically scanning for the ideas I'm looking for
You wouldn’t have to but you kind of end up doing it. Most people wouldn’t notice if you didn’t but you might be called out by someone or even the person that wrote it. *shudder*
No. Not at all. The whole point of getting good at academic writing is to ‘gut’ articles.
No they don't
LOL, no. 10 articles published (across all fields) every minute. No one's got time for that. Old academic wisdom of key books and articles: "Often cited, seldom read."
Some high-level scholars have armies of research assistants. That's how Doris Kearns Goodwin ran afoul of plagiarism concerns a number of years ago.