What is a research article?: Genre variability and data selection in genre research

The written forms of the academic community, particularly the research article, are a frequent focus of genre research. Yet the criteria used to select “research articles” from among the different text types published in scholarly journals are not always made apparent. We argue that an elastic yet operational set of criteria for identifying the “research article” is both necessary and possible, and we offer a summary of our own process for developing such criteria in a project focused on the theory-practice tension in academic research in education. While genre theory's interest in variability may make researchers wary of setting boundaries, defining a prestige knowledge-making genre like the “research article” is not just methodologically but also politically significant. In unpacking tacit assumptions about what we select as data we become more aware not just of sampling biases but of which forms of knowledge we legitimate and exclude.