Article Annotation Description

The following guidelines will help students to understand and annotate the article
critically. Students should use these guidelines in order to present the key issues
of the article and complete the written assignment.

Article Information

Title:

Write the title of the article here. Titles will tell you a lot about the content
of the article: the geographical focus, period, subject, and, sometimes,
something about the authors approach or interpretation (which may be
indicated by a play on words or a question mark). You can also use this
space to comment on what the title leads you to expect from the article.

Author(s):

Note the authors of the paper. If you know who he or she is, then make a
note of that, too. What is the author's discipline?

Source:

Where was this article published? Note the original source of the article.
The publication it appeared in can lend or deny the material credibility.

Analysis Information
Examine the article as a whole. Try to determine something about the purpose, audience, and
content of the paper before you start reading. Look for clues in the title and/or subtitle, the
acknowledgements (if any), the first foot/end note, and the author's biographical note (sometimes
with the article, sometimes compiled separately).

Purpose:

Why do you think the author wrote this paper? Does it seem to be refuting
someone else's interpretation of some event or phenomenon? Is it offering
new information? You'll usually find clues to the answer to these questions
in the first few paragraphs. That's where authors usually try to show why
their paper is useful and worth reading.

Audience:

Who is this paper written for? Experts? The general public? Knowing who
the authors are addressing can help you decide how to approach the article.
If the authors are addressing an expert audience, then the style will likely
be more academic. There may be fewer explanations or somewhat less
background information. If the audience is a broader one, then there may
be more detail but less detailed explanations.

Subject:

What does it seem the article is about? Look at the first couple of

paragraphs; they should give you some hints. Again, refer to the title. Some
disciplines include an abstract that precedes the text. This will give you an
uncritical summary of the paper's subject/content.

Sources:

Where is the author getting her or his basic information? Is it mostly from
other books or articles? Is it based on interview, archival or survey data?
Knowing where the author got the information will tell you whether the
author is looking at something new, taking a new look at something old, or
talking about something new.

Primary Details
Start reading. If the article has a labeled introduction, you should find the author's statement of
purpose, or thesis statement, before the end of that section. You should also be able to tell what
evidence the author is going to use to support the position she or he has taken. The author may
also explain the limits on the article, the length of time, the geographic location, the extent of the
information that's going to be used, the theories that are going to be applied. You should also be
able to tell what the author's point of view is.

Thesis:

Write out the thesis statement as you find it in the article. It is sometimes
only one sentence; sometimes two or three. Sometimes the sentences are
separated from each other. An author might be obvious about it: "This
paper will argue. . ." or subtle, giving only a statement of his or her
interpretation followed by some indication of the evidence that will
support that position.

Evidence:

Note here what evidence the author claims will be used to support her/his
argument. This question may well have been answered in the first step, by
checking the notes. Use this stop to expand your grasp of the evidence.

Limits:

Writers of articles rarely tackle big topics. There isn't enough room to write
a history of the world or discuss big issues. Articles generally focus on a
particular event, change, person, phenomenon, or idea. It may be further
limited by a narrow geographic focus, a limited period, or being restricted
to a particular group of people. Note what limits the author places on the
article.

Point
View:

of This is sometimes easy to detect; sometimes you have to feel it out by

looking at what things are descibed positively and what are described
negatively. Note what you learn about the author's point of view.

Presentation and Argumentation

Keep reading but watch what the author is doing. This step requires that you read the article to
gain an understanding of how the author presents the evidence and makes it fit into the argument.
At this stage of the exercise, you should also take the time to look up any unfamiliar words or
concepts. Also, watch how the author switches from first explaining how the evidence supports
the argument and then to the summary. The last few paragraphs of the article should tidy up the
discussion, show how it all fits together neatly, where more research is needed, or how this
article has advanced knowledge, that is, the implications of the article.
Use this space to note the words or concepts you had to look up. Did

Concepts/Words: the author coin his/her own terms, or use common terms in unusual
ways?

Use of Evidence:

How well did the author rely on his/her evidence? Was everything
mentioned at the outset referred to in the article? Was quoted
material used to illustrate or substantiate points? You may not have
much to say for this section, or you might notice that materials listed
in the bibliography or reference were not used in the paper.

Conclusion:

You can either write out the author's conclusions (though they're
often a paragraph or so long), or you can summarize where the
author went with the paper. You may refer to the thesis statement to
help you phrase your summary.

Implications:

This is where you might note what the points the author has made
might mean in a larger context. What might government officials
make of this paper? Who might find it useful? Would anyone change
the way they work, or approach an issue if they read this article?
What difference has it made for you? You might also consider why
your instructor has asked you to read this article. What new courserelated information did it contain? Was the article assigned because it
illustrated ideas or concepts covered in the course? Perhaps the
author advanced thinking in the discipline. What do you think?

Source:
A
Guide
to
Reading
and
Analysing
Academic
Articles
http://ycdl4.yukoncollege.yk.ca/~agraham//guides/guidec.shtml Amanda Graham at Yukon College, Canada

Evaluation
Now that you've finished reading, consider your personal reaction to it: not only "did I like it?,"
"it was hard to read," or "it was boring/interesting." This, along with the work in the other steps,
is the basis for a critical evaluation of the article. Even if you don't know anything about the
topic, you can make some judgements about the article and how well the author made her or his
case. Evaluation is a bit harder. "Evaluating" means comparing one thing to some kind of

standard, that is, other articles in the same discipline or journal as the one you've read. If you are
not familiar with those other articles, it can be hard to evaluate well. However, you can do a
fairly good job of it by considering the conventions of other, similar articles. Does this one fit the
pattern? Does it have quality, that is, does it make up to the academic standards of writing,
presentation, organization, source citation, and such?

Personal
Reaction:

Strength
Case:

This is where you note your personal reaction to the paper. Your
comments might be one or two words, or might be longer. Remember,
too, that these notes will allow you to quickly review the article later
on. You might do well to write your future self fairly detailed notes.
Did the author persuade you that the point/argument she/he was
of making was true, or at least convincing? Did you feel, at any time,
that the author was just hoping you'd agree? Use this space to note
how convincing you thought the article was.

Evaluation:

Use this space to note how good this article was compared to other
articles, either in the discipline/area, or in the same journal. It is
helpful to write pages numbers of relevant passages in the article.

Quality:

Use this space to record your sense of the quality of the paper. In most
published articles, the quality will be quite high. Many people
contribute to helping an author revise and refine a paper and what you
see published is rarely what the author originally wrote. There may be
some technical problems, like spelling mistakes or formatting
problems that you might note.

Other:

Use this space and the ones below to record anything else you might
need to know about the article either to write a summary or a review
or to remember about it so you can read the summary sheet instead of
reading the article again before tests or exams or for referring to it in a
paper.

Article Analysis Sheet

Article Information
Title:

Modern Business Ethics Research: Concepts, Theories, and Relationships

Author(s):

Hsing-Chau Tseng, Chi-Hsiang Duan, Hui-Lien Tung, Hsiang-Jui Kung

Source:

Journal of Business Ethics (2010)

Analysis Information
Purpose:

Audience:

Subject:

Sources:

The purpose of this study is to investigate and outline the intellectual

structure of business ethics studies during 1997-2006 by studying 85000
cited references in 3059 articles published in three business ethics related
journals.
This article can help business researchers and business professionals by
indicating for them the most influential scholars and the most important
articles, also this article can help academia and practitioners to better
understand the modern business ethics.
In addition to that, this methodology of citation which the article indeed
proved can be used by different organization in different domain such as
finance and management.

This article is about business ethics, the authors collected 3059 articles
from three different journals and studied them in order to find out the
important publications and the influential scholars by analyzing citation and
co-citation.

The authors wrote their articles by analyzing 85000 references cited in 3059
articles published in three business ethics related journals in SSCI and SCI
databases, and these journals are ETH,EBR and JBE.

Primary Details
Thesis:

Evidence:

Limits:

The methodology used in this article based on citation and co-citation

theory, in which the authors think that they can identify the most important
articles and the influential scholars by using it.
The authors studied 85000 references cited in 3059 articles published in
three journals related to business ethics, from these references, they were
able to trace and identify the most important articles and the influential
scholars

The authors admitted that this articles has some limitation such as the
search criteria which they think it may be incomplete and many good articles
may not have been included cause of that , also they think that the sample
articles selected from 1997 2006 might affect the generalization of the
study.
Another limitation of this study according to the authors is that this article
couldnt exclude the phenomenon of self-citation.

The authors were able to prove that the citation methodology can be used to
identify the importance of some articles among others and they were also
able to identify the most influential scholars, the authors think that this
Point of View: methodology can be used in different domains and it will give a good result.

Presentation and Argumentation

The most important words are Business ethics, intellectual structure,
citation analysis, co-citation analysis, social network analysis.
The authors used common words in usual ways, but there is some places
where the authors used complex words such as "scientometrics
Concepts/Words: epistemology".

Use of Evidence: The authors presented a very strong and coherent article from abstract
to the end of it. They used many quoted materials from different sources

in a way to introduce an idea about business ethics and from there, they
developed their own theory about modern business ethics.
The authors also explained deeply their result of the research and how
they reached to it and they showed many tables and figures to prove
their work.

Conclusion:

Implications:

The authors collected 3059 articles from three different journals and
analyzed these articles using the citation and co-citation methodology
and social network analysis, in order to identify the important
publications and the influential scholars as well as the correlations
among these publications. They were able to prove that and also they
provided to different researchers these methods to explore the
intellectual structure of their own fields.

The authors think the most important implication is practical in nature

and that this method used in their research findings can be applied in
business, finance, management, and applied psychology for effective
business ethics development strategies.

Evaluation
Personal
Reaction:

Insightful development of the research processes to cover and answer

the research purposes.

The result founded was supported by many tables and graphs to

illustrate their findings, the analysis was based on 85000 references of
3059 articles, the authors were clear and coherent and presented their
Strength of Case: idea in depth and detailed.
I think this article is persuasive and convincing and able to provide
some useful information.

Evaluation:

I was able to develop an understanding about the modern business

ethics and how to make a research and write the report

Quality:

Clear and coherent article which outlined key elements of the research
processes and outcome with clear expressions of ideas.

Other:

This article is about modern business ethics, it started citing the purpose
of what is the article is about and then it gave different definition of
business ethics, from there; the authors presented their own definition to
it. Then, they went through the important historical work in business
ethics. The authors presented their methodology and explained how they
concluded the search and what was the different steps that they went
through to reach the final result. They were able to prove what was the
important articles and the most influential scholars from analyzing
different references.
They claim that their method of citation can be used in different field.