Reflecting on Information Resources with BEAM
Ohio State University Libraries Teaching & Learning and Robyn Hartman
Does this nightmare sound like how you feel every time you have to write a research paper?
Your team is playing in the big game, and you’re the coach. (Maybe the real coach missed the plane. Who knows–it’s a nightmare!) The stakes are high. You know your players are good athletes—you have access to the best and plenty of them. But you don’t really know good football strategies, so you don’t quite know how to use your players. For instance, is it better to keep your quarterback fresh by substituting often? Your kicker is not as bulky as your tackles. Is that typical of good kickers, or should you find somebody else? And what about your linemen? Can they tackle and block?
What makes this a nightmare is not knowing how to use your players in a high-pressure game. Unfortunately, that situation is similar to writing a research project if all you know are directions like these:
Your paper must be in 12 pt. font, Times New Roman, double spaced with no more than 1″ margins, and include a minimum of 8 total articles comprised of:
- At least 2 peer-reviewed articles
- 3 (no more than 6) popular articles (magazine or newspaper)
- 2 (no more than 4) electronic sources (website or blog)
You know you need sources, and you may already have found several credible ones. However, directions like those don’t help much with what to actually do with the sources. What you need is a game plan and strategies on how to use your sources. We recommend reflecting on your resources using BEAM.
BEAM
The BEAM method is especially helpful when deciding how to use a resource in a research project. Originally developed by Joseph Bizup, the BEAM method can help you:
- Quickly find the information you need to include in your paper.
- Organize your information resources.
- Identify where you need more resources.
- Take notes- this will help you avoid plagiarism when quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing.
BEAM is an acronym for:
- Background
- Exhibit
- Argument, and
- Method
Using BEAM with your information resources is like creating a game plan for your players.
Background
What are Background resources?
Background resources and information are general information or factual evidence used to provide context. They are usually secondary sources and tertiary sources.
These sources should be noncontroversial—the author accepts information from these sources as authoritative (and expects readers to, too). In other words, the sources (and the information gleaned from them) are generally trusted or undisputed.
Background resources include:
- Encyclopedias or Wikipedia
- Books with general overviews, nonfiction books
- Statistics
- Historical facts
- Biographies
- Field Guides
- In scholarly articles, background information is often found in the introduction and/or literature review.
Ask yourself these questions to determine if a resource is a Background source:
- What is the general context or overview of my topic?
- Does this source provide basic facts, definitions, or a topic summary?
- Is this source useful for helping me understand the foundational concepts?
- Can I use this source to provide historical context or broad overviews?
How can you use Background sources and information?
Writers rely on these sources for general factual information. For instance, a writer could use background information to introduce a setting, situation, or problem in their research paper. Background information can serve as the incontestable foundation for your claims.
Exhibit
What are Exhibit resources?
Exhibit (sometimes called Evidence) resources or materials are resources you can analyze or interpret. They are often primary sources.
Generally, Exhibit and Evidence sources are works of literature (or other media), collected data, or some observed phenomenon you have been asked to write about. They are what you analyze or interpret. Exhibit sources are not limited to examples in the humanities; they could also be data collected in a scientific experiment or by a website’s user survey.
Exhibit resources include:
- Data
- Observations
- Artifacts
- Literary or artistic works
- Field observations
- Experiment results
- Specimens
- Historical and government documents
- Newspaper articles from the time in question
- In scholarly articles, exhibit information can often be found in the Results section.
Ask yourself these questions to determine if a resource is an Exhibit source:
- Does this source contain data, examples, or evidence I can analyze or interpret?
- Can I use this source to illustrate or demonstrate a specific point in my argument?
- Can this source provide case studies, artifacts, or primary data to discuss?
- Can I use this source as an object of analysis (e.g., a text, an image, a piece of music)?
How can you use Exhibit sources and information?
Writers interpret and analyze sources like these in the same way they are used as exhibits and evidence in a museum or a court. They can also serve as examples that support a claim.
Argument
What are Argument resources?
Argument sources and information come from critical views from other scholars and experts. They are usually primary and secondary sources.
Argument sources provide you with other voices in the academic conversation about your topic. Who else has done similar research, and how should your paper respond to what they’ve said? Does your paper refine or extend an existing hypothesis someone else has tested? If so, those sources belong in your paper.
Argument resources include:
- Scholarly articles
- Books
- Literary or artistic criticism
- Opinion or editorial pieces
- In scholarly articles, you can find information about other writers’ arguments in the Literature Review and the authors’ arguments in the Discussion section.
Ask yourself these questions to determine if a resource is an Argument source:
- Does this source present a specific thesis or perspective that I can engage with?
- Can I use this source to support, refute, or complicate my own argument?
- Does the author take a particular stance on an issue that I need to consider?
- Can I engage with the ideas or theories presented in this source in my own analysis?
How can you use Argument sources and information?
Writers engage with these sources that they agree with or disagree with. The sources are usually written by scholars in their field. For instance, writers often include sources that describe earlier work that is specifically relevant to their own research question and their thesis (what they consider to be the answer to that question.)
Sometimes, including an argument source can mean disagreeing with it and definitively indicating a different direction.
Method
What are Method resources?
Method (sometimes called Theory) sources and information refers to the methods or theories used by the author to analyze and interpret the evidence. While argument sources help you frame your paper within the larger scholarly discussion about your topic and exhibits provide a focal point, method sources help provide underlying and sometimes implicit assumptions for your argument or analysis. They are often secondary sources.
Method resources include:
- Articles or books on theories or theorists
- Information on research methodology
- Textbooks
- In scholarly articles, methods and theories can be found in the method or methodology section or implied in the introduction or literature review.
Ask yourself these questions to determine if a resource is a Method source:
- Does this source offer a particular approach or method for analyzing my topic?
- Can I use this source to adopt a specific research methodology or framework?
- Can this source help me understand how to conduct my research or analysis?
- Does this source provide tools, strategies, or techniques I can apply to my work?
How can you use Method sources and information?
Writers follow the key terms, concepts, or strategies these sources explain. They pay attention to and use the relevant work of others before them to carry out their own work and then describe it in the research paper. You can use Method sources to adopt a concept, a work process, or a manner of thinking. For some research, these are literally the methods you use to collect data, such as a focus group or a particular statistical analysis, and they provide justification for them. In other research, your paper might reveal a leaning toward a major attitude or school of thought within a discipline.
BEAM Summary Chart
| BEAM | Explanation | Uses | Source Examples |
| Background | Factual and noncontroversial information, providing context | Give context, Provide facts, present authoritative info | Encyclopedia articles, overviews in books, statistics, historical facts |
| Exhibit | Data, observations, objects, artifacts, documents that can be analyzed | To be analyzed, interpreted. Primary sources, Evidence | Text of a novel, field observations, focus group transcriptions, questionnaire data, results of an experiment, interview data (primary sources) |
| Argument | Critical views from other scholars and commentators; part of the academic conversation | Show prior conversation. Refute, refine, extend, affirm | Scholarly articles, books, critical reviews (e.g. literacy criticism), editorials |
| Method | Reference to methods or theories used, usually explicit though may be implicit; approach or research methodology used | Provide definitions, explain how you will anlayze and interpret the evidence | Part of books or articles with reference to theorists (e.g. Foucault, Derrida) or theory (e.g. feminism, post-colonialism, new historicism etc.); information on a research methodology |
Exercises
Chapter Attribution:
Bizup, J. (2008). BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing. Rhetoric Review, 27(1), 72–86.
Choosing and Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research by Teaching & Learning, Ohio State University Libraries, licensed under CC BY 4.0
Lievers, W. B., & Adamic, P. F. (2015). Incidence and severity of foot and ankle injuries in men’s collegiate American football. Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, 3(5), 2325967115581593.
Mills, J., Flynn, R., Fox, N., Shaw, D., & Wiley, C. W. (2021). Beyond the checklist approach: A librarian-faculty collaboration to teach the BEAM Method of source evaluation. Communications in Information Literacy, 15 (1), 119–139. https://doi.org/10.157
Indiana University Bloomington Libraries Evaluating Sources Rhetorically Handout https://libraries.indiana.edu/sites/default/files/Evaluating_Sources_Rhetorically.pdf
Using the work or ideas of others as though they are your own, which means without citing them. If you incorporate others’ ideas or work into your own by using direct quotes, paraphrases, or summaries, you must cite their sources in order for the use not to be considered plagiarism.
Sources that provide general, factual, or historical context for a topic.
Primary sources or data that are analyzed or interpreted as evidence
Scholarly or expert sources that present a specific viewpoint or thesis relevant to the research topic
Sources that offer theories, methodologies, or analytical frameworks used to interpret evidence.
Sources that provide second-hand information. That is, they are not the original information but are about the original information. For instance, such sources are not a novel (the original, first-hand information), but are such sources as a book review of the novel or promo copy that tells readers about the novel (both second-hand information about the first-hand information). Another example: an analysis (secondary source) of a piece of legislation (primary source) that appears in a newspaper. One last example: subsequent news coverage of an event (secondary source) after the initial reporting on the event (primary source) was published by the news outlet.
Sources that provide third-hand information. That is, they are not the original or primary source (say, a novel) and are not second-hand information (such as a book review of that novel), which is always about the original source and usually by someone other than the creator of the original source. Instead, tertiary sources abstract, compile, digest, or otherwise organize primary and secondary sources. Examples are dictionaries, encyclopedias, guides, and handbooks. Tertiary sources are those you usually wouldn’t read from beginning to end.
A standalone or section of a scholarly paper that surveys existing research and arguments on a topic.
A term applied with different definitions, depending on the academic discipline. In the humanities and many other disciplines, a primary source is information that is firsthand, in its original form. We get primary source information without it having gone through any filter—no one translated it or told us what it meant. Examples of some sources that are often used as primary sources include diaries, breaking news stories, music and dance performances, artworks, eyewitness accounts, and journal articles that report research for the first time. But even those sources have to be actually used in research in order to become primary sources—nothing just exists as a primary source. The term primary source is used much less often in the sciences. When it does come up, scientists tend to use this term for the source, usually a research journal article, that was most important to their work.
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