Journal analysis

You will be required to select a topic and systematically track research on this topic in biological anthropology and at least one other subfield of anthropology through peer-reviewed journals. Specifically, you will examine how a topic of interest to you has been covered in the last 15 years in five leading, peer-reviewed bioanthropology journals. Your review must include the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, American Anthropologist, and Current Anthropology. You will choose two additional journals that are appropriate for the topical focus of your review, e.g. American Journal of Human Biology, Journal of Human Evolution, American Journal of Human Genetics, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, International Journal of Primatology. The two additional journals do not have to be bioanthropology journals. Most of these journals are available online, although some do not go back as far as 15 years through the online access and you will have to go to the library to see the hard copies. A good way to search for articles that are relevant to your topic is through PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=pubmed) – try different search terms and different combinations of search terms to get a manageable number of articles to peruse.

Once you choose your topic, you will write a paper (10 pages, double-spaced) that discusses how your topic was addressed in the five journals over that past 15 years. An important point will be to examine how bioanthropology and another subfield of anthropology cover your topic, e.g. what are the important questions being addressed/hypotheses being tested, what are the interpretations and conclusions, are there major differences in interpretations/conclusions? Your topic (the relevant question(s) and which other subfield you will be examining) and an abstract (<200 words) of your search strategy (which journals are you using and why) is due at the beginning of class on Jan 23. In your abstract, be sure to specify your two additional journals, and why you chose them, as well as the other subfield of anthropology that you will be studying. I encourage you to discuss your topic with me in advance, in person or by email. The final paper is due at our last class, Feb 20.

The purpose of this exercise is to: 1) introduce you to the major journals, 2) improve your ability to conduct literature reviews, 3) enhance your skills in identifying a research problem, and 4) to identify patterns across subfields, as well as the potential strengths and weaknesses of a four-field anthropology.