Author: Luis-Miguel Romero – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
One of the major problems of the new investigators is based mainly on the lack of reading of other investigations. Not surprisingly, most scientific journals in the field of social sciences require that the manuscripts contain a theoretical framework or state of the art in the introduction that allows not only to put in context the readers about the academic treatment that has had the problem of research and background, but also to demonstrate to the reviewers that the author of the article has reviewed, with pertinence, suitability, depth and sufficiency the investigations related to the scope of the study.
«What begins badly, ends badly» (Euripides).
Remember that writing a scientific article is the final phase of a research process (dissemination), so it is wrong to think that you have to read «to make an article». Reading should be the initial step even to determine the object of study, that is, before deciding the research problem, always taking into account that an investigation seeks to bring new knowledge. In this sense, it is impossible to know about the originality of our research, its limits and antecedents without having previously made a comprehensive analysis on the treatment that has had the problem that is wanted to treat.
Of course, the review of the scientific literature should be formulated from high impact indexes (JCR), medium impact (Scopus / Scimago), down to databases, lower impact repositories or Open Access (Latindex, Dialnet, Google Scholar), books, abstracts of non-indexed congresses, and so on; never the opposite. We must remember that the high and medium impact indexes guarantee us products of higher scientific quality – basically by their standards of revision and updating -, which will directly affect the quality of our reading, ergo of research and its dissemination.
