English 5390: Writing for Publication Weekly Blog Post - Literature Review

Question: What are the major theories or studies that may use in the review of literature in your scholarly article? List at least three and describe how they specifically relate to your topic.

For my literature review, I will need to discuss the scientific ethos because I am relating how the writing of current authors published within Journal of the American Chemical Society has changed since the early days of the journal in the 1880s up to modern works published in the journal. Works like Lawrence J. Prelli's "The Rhetorical Construction of Scientific Ethos" published in Rhetoric and the Human Sciences, edited by Herbert W. Simons, published by Sage Publications, London, in 1989 describe the parts of the scientific ethos: universalism, communality, distinterestedness, organized skepticism, originality, and humility. If I can obtain Merton's works on scientific ethos directly, it would be helpful, but they are rather old (1930s to 1940s) and have thus far eluded me.

I also, likely, need to ground my work in Karl Popper's theories and perhaps in Thomas's S. Kuhn's work. However, my knowledge of both works until recently was mostly secondhand from where the works were cited within the body of other articles that I had read. I recently obtained both books as Nook Books from Barnes and Noble and I am working my way through them to determine if they are truly useful.

Third, I need to look at more modern works about the presentation of the scientific ethos. Works like

Roland, M.-C. (2009). Quality and integrity in scientific writing: prerequisites for quality in science communication. Journal of Science Communication , 8 (2), A04.

Lopez Rodriguez, C. I. (2007). Understanding scientific communication through the extraction of the conceptual and rhetorical information codified by verbs. Terminology, 13(1), 61-84.

Harmon, J. E.; Gross, A. G. (2009). The structure of scientific titles. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 39(4) 455-465.

Hutto, D. (2008). Graphics and ethos in biomedical journals. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 38(2), 111-131.

The ones that look at the parts of a paper and link it to rhetorical theory. In addition, Ken Baake's book "Metaphor and Knowledge" may appear in my literature review, depending on length of the current lit review and relevancy.

I have lots of sources that could be reviewed in a lit review, yet I wonder if I am still looking in the write direction. The purpose of a lit review is to ground my work in theory and show where it came from so that I can project its contribution to the conversation. My current listing may be too much and likely needs pared to avoid driving my audience to tears.