So I am trying to be as productive as possible until I start my masters. To that end, I've been skimming the academic literature. I just go to JSTOR and type in a couple of keywords relating to some topics that i think might interest me as well as some ancillary stuff related to them and just plug away. Nothing terribly focused... just seeing whats out there.

I have a goal of three-four articles a week... I figure by next fall I that equals about 150 articles... which puts me in a pretty good spot compared to most of my peers in whatever MS program I end up in. My problem is that it is hard to get a handle on what they are talking about in some of these articles (that is to be expected at this stage sure).

I'm not worried about not understanding aspects of the experimental design or data analysis at this stage, but sometimes when they are talking about a theory I dont understand etc I don't know if I should just skim the article first, and pull out all the author's citations first and read those articles first (so I have a better idea of what is going on in the original article)... or just plug away and ignore the stuff i don't understand yet so I can move on to another topic. The first approach means I'd spend the next year probably focused on really getting to the bottom of 6 or 7 articles, the latter approach means I'd be exposed to a lot more of whats out there, but understand it all less.

I am trying to get a feel for what I might want to research as well as what Professors I would want as advisors... so keep in mind I am reading up on 5 or 6 very broad topics within marketing (public policy/legal enviornmental/sustainable, ethics, cognition) I am not writing a thesis.

This is impressive. Reading papers can be intimidating at this stage, but it is an useful exercise.

More than the research, it is the style , the methodology and the assumptions that should be the major focus of your readings. You will understand the nuances over time.

Depending on the journal, it can take anywhere between 3 months to 3 years for a publication. So, to keep up with the latest work, you may consider complementing your journal reading activity by reading through dissertations. Ideally, these should be dissertations that are supervised by people who you want to work with.

Dissertations are expansive. Any well written dissertation will display a mastery of existing literature and will explain the nuances of their models very well.

Finally, if you are interested in a subject, the best way to learn more about its nuances is to write an article on it. The idea is not so much a publication as the (ideally, frustrating) voyage of discovery that will help you grow as a researcher.

I hope this helps.

Praet -

what is impressive -- me reading 3 - 4 articles a week? I figure it is just a taste of what is to come. What I worry about is that I have ZERO time for reading for pleasure anymore... and truth be told I haven't read a book recreationally in a LONG time. Also, the amount of time spent watching TV and playing XboX 360 is approaching zero... not that this is a bad thing !!! just that sometimes you feel like you are losing touch



this is what bothers me the most. i've read some articles where i feel the authors are assuming *way* too much or simplifying something too much. especially on the cognitive side of marketing research. maybe this is just a function of the need for simplicity when developing a model of behavior... maybe it is a function of me not understanding all of the psychological background info which would might give their assumption more validity.



I never thought of reading other's dissertations because they would explain things better, but it makes sense. i've found a superstar in my field at the university of michigan, but his CV doesn't list any dissertations that he has supervised. can you search by advisor?

Good question. Google scholar (scholar.google.com) tends to put more heavily cited articles first in its search results. You can also download a scholar gadget that ranks citations for papers published by a given author. EBSCO (my default database) will list citations, but it won't sort or search by citation count (if it does, I haven't seen it).

very cool. so is it safe to say 100+ citations = important and relevant article

It will never hurt to send a polite email. There should be a list of current PhD students on the department's website. I would contact them first.

Some of these people ARE bad writers, and in the course of an MS or PhD program you'll probably be exposed to good researchers who are not only bad writers, but also terrible speakers. Keep in mind that for better or worse, in academia the value of your research is primarily driven by what new ideas/evidence you are bringing to the table. While the ability to express those ideas clearly helps, it's not the main thing.

As far as citations go, on http://www.harzing.com/resources.htm, you can download the Publish or Perish software (free), which uses Google Scholar data for all kinds of citation analysis. For example, you can type in an author name and get all of his/her articles with number of citations, or type in a journal name and get the most cited articles. This latter option might be what you're looking for. I think it's a great piece of software.