1. How to critique a journal article
Information from the Center for Teaching and Learning at UIS

2. What is the purpose?
The purpose of a critique is to give YOUR qualified opinion of the article. To do this, you do not under any circumstances ask the opinion of anyone else, only YOUR qualified opinion matters!

3. So where do I start?
The first thing that you must do is read the title of the article. What do you think that this is going to be about? Now that you have an idea, its time to read through the article to get an overview of what the article is about.

4. After reading the article once…
After you read the article once, then you need to read it again, critically. This is the point where you want to make notes to yourself, points that you don’t quite understand, points that you think are wrong, etc.

5. Questions you may want to address in your critique (even for other article types…)
Is the title of the article appropriate?
Is the abstract specific, representative of the article?
Is the purpose of the article clear?
Is all of the discussion relevant to the article?
What underlying assumptions does the author have?
Was the author objective in their discussion or not?
Are there any changes that you feel should be made?
Do you find error of fact and interpretation? (You can check this by looking up for yourself the references the author cites.)

6. Here are a few questions that are more specific for research
Are the experimental methods described adequately?
Is the objective of the experiment important for the field?
Have the procedures been presented in enough detail so that a reader can duplicate the experiment? (This is something of importance, sometimes they omit some of the steps so it doesn’t make sense)

7. Remember…
The bulk of your paper should be YOUR qualified opinion. If you agree or disagree with the author then this should be evident in your article.
This critique should be at least 2 pages in length, just because I said minimum of two pages, don’t just stop if you have more to say! I hate to read a critique that doesn’t really have an ending!
Make sure that you cite any outside sources that you use for this as well, I would like to see you use at least one, if not more to back up your opinion.

8. For more information, please see…
content/uploads/sites/76/2013/03/Howtocritiqueajournalarticle.pdf
This is also a handout that contains all the information contained in this presentation.
Thanks to the Center for Teaching and Learning at UIS