Orientation Article scanning idea

This is from the CJCLS list. I thought it was an interesting idea:
During my library orientations for, let’s say an English 1A class, one of my topics is, “You are flooded with information. So, you have to learn scanning for scholarly articles because there is only so much time you have for writing a paper.”

Let’s take the Expanded Academic Index as an example. Having a list of 3,000 articles, then (1) check the length of an article: skip less than 1,000 words; 5,000+ words is an indication of being scholarly. (2) Frequency of publication: select preferably a quarterly publication = indication of being scholarly. (3) I prefer anything in the title of the journal with, “quarterly, review, journal, scholarly, studies,” etc. (4) Then check the title of the article whether it falls within your interest; if so, then open it. (5) I prefer a summary or abstract. (6) I prefer a paragraph on methodology of the study. (7) Is there supporting material, like graphs and statistics? (8) I expect a lengthy bibliography. --- The more mental checkmarks, the better the quality.

All the above shouldn’t take more than 15 - 20 seconds per article before deciding whether to skip it or to start reading the abstract. A+ students may also want to copy the first author and check in Google his/her background = is the author an authority?

I am explaining the above points (and the exceptions) while actually going through some examples. And for sure, what I am doing is certainly not unique. I suppose it is only one example of teaching “Critical thinking.”

Fred Brose