 As a social work major, Knox often struggled to understand why his professors wanted him to do certain things. Why did he always have to review the scholarly literature on his topic when he started a research project? Why did he always have to cite previous studies in his own work? Then he learned about the scholarly conversation. A librarian explained that scholars are always talking to each other through their work. Each book or article that Knox finds related to his topic is like a voice in this ongoing conversation among scholars. Here's how it works. A scholar gets a great idea for a topic that she would like to research. But before she can do her research, she first reviews the previous literature related to her topic. Her goal is to see if anyone else has done a study like hers. She finds that other scholars have done similar studies, but no one has done exactly what she is proposing. She uses the results of the previous studies to guide the development of her own research. When she writes an article describing her research, she includes citations for all of the previous studies that she reviewed. In doing so, she shows not only how her research is building on the previous research, she is also showing how her work is different from that previous research. She is demonstrating that she found a gap in the research, a question that had not yet been answered and she is using her own research to fill in that gap. After she publishes her research in an academic journal or shares it in a conference presentation, other scholars will review her work and build on it for their own research. Some might agree with her findings and others might disagree, but they will use her results as a guide to their own work. And so, when his professors want him to cite previous research in his papers, they want Knox to show that he's reviewed and understands the previous conversation that scholars have had on his topic. They want him to explain how his work is building on this previous work, as well as how it is different from the previous research and what he is contributing to the conversation on the topic. Thinking about research as participating in a conversation among scholars helped Knox to more clearly see why his professors always wanted him to review the literature as part of the research process and why he had to cite previous research in his own work.