Research Guide: Books

Use this guide to learn more about how to find books

How to Identify Scholarly Books

Identifying a Scholarly Book

How can you tell if a books is scholarly?

Below are some important indicators to help.

As shown in the image below, you can see that...

  • Scholarly books have academic language and often, a complex title.
  • They will often have multiple, academic authors
  • And the publisher will be an academic one, often a University Press

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image of the ebook showing the title, author, and publisher

 

  • Here you see the author's academic credentials are established at the front of the book. You will see information showing their experience and works, such as the long list of articles show here, written by the primary author. 

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page of the ebook showing the author's past works
 

  • While not overly reliant on academic jargon, the scholarly intent of the book is apparent in the table of contents.

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page of the ebook showing the table of contents

 

  • Scholarship is an ongoing conversation in which academics build on and respond to the ideas of others. Their extensive use of in-text citations indicates where this author references and builds on the work of other researchers and scholars.

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page of the ebook showing in-text citations and references to other researchers throughout

 

 

  • You will also see that the book clearly cites it sources throughout the book, but also in the book's bibliography. Here, you can see that this bibliography is 20 pages long. This indicates that the author has clearly used and built on the ideas of others in the field, other scholarship.

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page of the ebook showing the bibliography