What is academic or scholarly research?

"The systematic and objective search for evidence that will substantiate, verify, or refute previous findings, interpretations, or explanations within a specified academic discipline. Recognized by scholars by its particular emphasis on style, method, and purpose—as in historiography or literary analysis. Scholarly research is often referred to as disciplined inquiry as opposed to subjective or impressionistic analyses and interpretations that do not reflect scholarly traditions."

"Scholarly Research." The Greenwood Dictionary of Education, edited by John W. Collins, III and Nancy Patricia O'Brien, 2nd ed., Greenwood, 2011, pp. 411-412. Gale eBooks, https://link-gale-com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/apps/doc/CX3303502808/GVRL?u=northwestern&sid=GVRL&xid=567e2bbd. Accessed 24 Apr. 2020.

What is academic or scholarly writing?

"Academic writing is generally quite formal, objective (impersonal) and technical. It is formal by avoiding casual or conversational language, such as contractions or informal vocabulary. It is impersonal and objective by avoiding direct reference to people or feelings, and instead emphasizing objects, facts and ideas. It is technical by using vocabulary specific to the discipline...

Different disciplines also have different styles and structures of writing. For example, some disciplines, such as in the humanities, expect longer paragraphs, which include topic sentences to show how your argument is structured. Other disciplines, for example in the sciences, expect short paragraphs, with no topic sentences, which are denser in factual information."