which section of a research article should you read first

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• J Oral Maxillofac Pathol
• v.17(1); Jan-Apr 2013

Art of reading a journal article: Methodically and effectively

Rv subramanyam.

Department of Oral Pathology, Drs Sudha and Nageswara Rao Siddhartha Institute of Dental Sciences, Gannavaram, Andhra Pradesh, India

Background:

Reading scientific literature is mandatory for researchers and clinicians. With an overflow of medical and dental journals, it is essential to develop a method to choose and read the right articles.

To outline a logical and orderly approach to reading a scientific manuscript. By breaking down the task into smaller, step-by-step components, one should be able to attain the skills to read a scientific article with ease.

The reader should begin by reading the title, abstract and conclusions first. If a decision is made to read the entire article, the key elements of the article can be perused in a systematic manner effectively and efficiently. A cogent and organized method is presented to read articles published in scientific journals.

Conclusion:

One can read and appreciate a scientific manuscript if a systematic approach is followed in a simple and logical manner.

INTRODUCTION

“ We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge .” John Naisbitt

It has become essential for the clinicians, researchers, and students to read articles from scientific journals. This is not only to keep abreast of progress in the speciality concerned but also to be aware of current trends in providing optimum healthcare to the patients. Reading scientific literature is a must for students interested in research, for choosing their topics and carrying out their experiments. Scientific literature in that field will help one understand what has already been discovered and what questions remain unanswered and thus help in designing one's research project. Sackett (1981)[ 1 ] and Durbin (2009)[ 2 ] suggested various reasons why most of us read journal articles and some of these are listed in Table 1 .

Common reasons for reading journal articles

The scientific literature is burgeoning at an exponential rate. Between 1978 and 1985, nearly 272,344 articles were published annually and listed in Medline. Between 1986 and 1993, this number reached 344,303 articles per year, and between 1994 and 2001, the figure has grown to 398,778 articles per year.[ 3 ] To be updated with current knowledge, a physician practicing general medicine has to read 17 articles a day, 365 days a year.[ 4 ]

In spite of the internet rapidly gaining a strong foothold as a quick source of obtaining information, reading journal articles, whether from print or electronic media, still remains the most common way of acquiring new information for most of us.[ 2 ] Newspaper reports or novels can be read in an insouciant manner, but reading research reports and scientific articles requires concentration and meticulous approach. At present, there are 1312 dentistry journals listed in Pubmed.[ 5 ] How can one choose an article, read it purposefully, effectively, and systematically? The aim of this article is to provide an answer to this question by presenting an efficient and methodical approach to a scientific manuscript. However, the reader is informed that this paper is mainly intended for the amateur reader unaccustomed to scientific literature and not for the professional interested in critical appraisal of journal articles.

TYPES OF JOURNAL ARTICLES

Different types of papers are published in medical and dental journals. One should be aware of each kind; especially, when one is looking for a specific type of an article. Table 2 gives different categories of papers published in journals.

Types of articles published in a journal

In general, scientific literature can be primary or secondary. Reports of original research form the “primary literature”, the “core” of scientific publications. These are the articles written to present findings on new scientific discoveries or describe earlier work to acknowledge it and place new findings in the proper perspective. “Secondary literature” includes review articles, books, editorials, practice guidelines, and other forms of publication in which original research information is reviewed.[ 6 ] An article published in a peer-reviewed journal is more valued than one which is not.

An original research article should consist of the following headings: Structured abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD) and may be Randomized Control Trial (RCT), Controlled Clinical Trial (CCT), Experiment, Survey, and Case-control or Cohort study. Reviews could be non-systematic (narrative) or systematic. A narrative review is a broad overview of a topic without any specific question, more or less an update, and qualitative summary. On the other hand, a systematic review typically addresses a specific question about a topic, details the methods by which papers were identified in the literature, uses predetermined criteria for selection of papers to be included in the review, and qualitatively evaluates them. A meta-analysis is a type of systematic review in which numeric results of several separate studies are statistically combined to determine the outcome of a specific research question.[ 7 – 9 ] Some are invited reviews, requested by the Editor, from an expert in a particular field of study.

A case study is a report of a single clinical case, whereas, a case series is a description of a number of such cases. Case reports and case series are description of disease (s) generally considered rare or report of heretofore unknown or unusual findings in a well-recognized condition, unique procedure, imaging technique, diagnostic test, or treatment method. Technical notes are description of new, innovative techniques, or modifications to existing procedures. A pictorial essay is a teaching article with images and legends but has limited text. Commentary is a short article on an author's personal opinion of a specific topic and could be controversial. An editorial, written by the editor of the journal or invited, can be perspective (about articles published in that particular issue) or persuasive (arguing a specific point of view). Other articles published in a journal include letters to the editor, book reviews, conference proceedings and abstracts, and abstracts from other journals.[ 10 ]

WHAT TO READ IN A JOURNAL? – CHOOSING THE RIGHT ARTICLE

Not all research articles published are excellent, and it is pragmatic to decide if the quality of the study warrants reading of the manuscript. The first step for a reader is to choose a right article for reading, depending on one's individual requirement. The next step is to read the selected article methodically and efficiently.[ 2 ] A simple decision-making flowchart is depicted in [ Figure 1 ], which helps one to decide the type of article to select. This flowchart is meant for one who has a specific intent of choosing a particular type of article and not for one who intends to browse through a journal.

Schematic flowchart of the first step in choosing an article to read

HOW TO START READING AN ARTICLE?

“ There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing .” Clarence Day

At first glance, a journal article might appear intimidating for some or confusing for others with its tables and graphs. Reading a research article can be a frustrating experience, especially for the one who has not mastered the art of reading scientific literature. Just like there is a method to extract a tooth or prepare a cavity, one can also learn to read research articles by following a systematic approach. Most scientific articles are organized as follows:[ 2 , 11 ]

• Title: Topic and information about the authors.
• Abstract: Brief overview of the article.
• Introduction: Background information and statement of the research hypothesis.
• Methods: Details of how the study was conducted, procedures followed, instruments used and variables measured.
• Results: All the data of the study along with figures, tables and/or graphs.
• Discussion: The interpretation of the results and implications of the study.
• References/Bibliography: Citations of sources from where the information was obtained.

Review articles do not usually follow the above pattern, unless they are systematic reviews or meta-analysis. The cardinal rule is: Never start reading an article from the beginning to the end. It is better to begin by identifying the conclusions of the study by reading the title and the abstract.[ 12 ] If the article does not have an abstract, read the conclusions or the summary at the end of the article first. After reading the abstract or conclusions, if the reader deems it is interesting or useful, then the entire article can be read [ Figure 2 ].

Decision-making flowchart to decide whether to read the chosen article or not

Like the title of a movie which attracts a filmgoer, the title of the article is the one which attracts a reader in the first place. A good title will inform the potential reader a great deal about the study to decide whether to go ahead with the paper or dismiss it. Most readers prefer titles that are descriptive and self-explanatory without having to look at the entire article to know what it is all about.[ 2 ] For example, the paper entitled “Microwave processing – A blessing for pathologists” gives an idea about the article in general to the reader. But there is no indication in the title whether it is a review article on microwave processing or an original research. If the title had been “Comparison of Microwave with Conventional Tissue Processing on quality of histological sections”, even the insouciant reader would have a better understanding of the content of the paper.

Abstract helps us determine whether we should read the entire article or not. In fact, most journals provide abstract free of cost online allowing us to decide whether we need to purchase the entire article. Most scientific journals now have a structured abstract with separate subheadings like introduction (background or hypothesis), methods, results and conclusions making it easy for a reader to identify important parts of the study quickly.[ 13 ] Moreover, there is usually a restriction about the number of words that can be included in an abstract. This makes the abstract concise enough for one to read rapidly.

The abstract can be read in a systematic way by answering certain fundamental questions like what was the study about, why and how was the study conducted, the results and their inferences. The reader should make a note of any questions that were raised while reading the abstract and be sure that answers have been found after reading the entire article.[ 12 ]

Reading the entire article

Once the reader has decided to read the entire article, one can begin with the introduction.

The purpose of the introduction is to provide the rationale for conducting the study. This section usually starts with existing knowledge and previous research of the topic under consideration. Typically, this section concludes with identification of gaps in the literature and how these gaps stimulated the researcher to design a new study.[ 12 ] A good introduction should provide proper background for the study. The aims and objectives are usually mentioned at the end of the introduction. The reader should also determine whether a research hypothesis (study hypothesis) was stated and later check whether it was answered under the discussion.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This section gives the technical details of how the experiments were carried out. In most of the research articles, all details are rarely included but there should be enough information to understand how the study was carried out.[ 12 ] Information about the number of subjects included in the study and their categorization, sampling methods, the inclusion criteria (who can be in) and exclusion criteria (who cannot be in) and the variables chosen can be derived by reading this section. The reader should get acquainted with the procedures and equipment used for data collection and find out whether they were appropriate.

RESULTS OF THE STUDY

In this section, the researchers give details about the data collected, either in the form of figures, tables and/or graphs. Ideally, interpretation of data should not be reported in this section, though statistical analyses are presented. The reader should meticulously go through this segment of the manuscript and find out whether the results were reliable (same results over time) and valid (measure what it is supposed to measure). An important aspect is to check if all the subjects present in the beginning of the study were accounted for at the end of the study. If the answer is no, the reader should check whether any explanation was provided.

Results that were statistically significant and results that were not, must be identified. One should also observe whether a correct statistical test was employed for analysis and was the level of significance appropriate for the study. To appreciate the choice of a statistical test, one requires an understanding of the hypothesis being tested.[ 14 , 15 ] Table 3 provides a list of commonly used statistical tests used in scientific publications. Description and interpretation of these tests is beyond the scope of this paper. It is wise to remember the following advice: It is not only important to know whether a difference or association is statistically significant but also appreciate whether it is large or substantial enough to be useful clinically.[ 16 ] In other words, what is statistically significant may not be clinically significant.

Basic statistics commonly used in scientific publications

This is the most important section of the article where the research questions are answered and the meaning of analysis and interpretation of the data are presented. Usually the study results are compared with other studies, explaining in what aspects they were different or similar. Ideally, no new data should be presented under discussion and no information from other sections should be repeated.[ 2 ] In addition, this section also discusses the various strengths and limitations/shortcomings of the study, providing suggestions about areas that need additional research.

The meaning of results and their analyses, new theories or hypotheses, limitations of the study, explanation of differences and similarities with other comparable studies, and suggestions for future research are offered in this section. It is important to remember that the discussions are the authors’ interpretations and opinions and not necessarily facts.

READING THE CONCLUSION (AGAIN !)

Though conclusion part had been read at the beginning, it is prudent to read it again at the end to confirm whether what we had inferred initially is correct. If the conclusion had not made sense earlier, it may make sense after having perused through the entire article. Sometimes, the study conclusions are included in the discussion section and may not be easy to locate. The questions that can be asked under various sub-headings of an original research paper are presented as a simple questionnaire in Table 4 . It is assumed that one who is using this questionnaire has read and analyzed the abstract and then decided to read the entire article. This questionnaire does not critically analyze a scientific article. However, answers to these questions provide a systematic approach to obtain a broad overview of the manuscript, especially to a novice. If one who is new to reading articles, writing answers to these questions and taking notes will help in understanding most aspects of a research article.

Questionnaire for original research articles

“ Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking .” Edward Gibbon

It has become mandatory to read scientific literature to be well-informed of ever-expanding information and/or for better diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. Since there is an abundance of journals and articles, it is critical to develop a modus operandi for achieving a rapid, purposeful, effective and useful method to read these manuscripts. A simple but efficient and logical approach to scientific literature has been presented here for choosing articles and reading them systematically and effectively for a better understanding.

Source of Support: Nil.

Conflict of Interest: None declared.

How to Read a Scholarly Article

• Anatomy of an Article
• Key Reading Strategies
• Quick Tips for Reading Strategies
• Reading for Different Disciplines
• Reference Sources
• Planning Resources

So Many Articles, So Little Time

Skipping around is encouraged when reading a scholarly article:

• begin by reading abstract
• skim the introduction and jump to the end to read the conclusion

Skimming these sections first will allow you to quickly determine if the article is relevant to your research and if you should do an in-depth reading.

1. Abstract

Read the abstract first

The abstract previews the entire article, makes it easier to judge whether it is relevant.

For the sciences:

• Titles can only tell you so much about the content of the article. The Abstract acts as a preview for the entire article, including the methods and results. By reading the Abstract first, you can get a better idea of what the article is actually about, if it relates to what you are researching, and whether it is worth your time to read the rest of it.

For the humanities:

• Articles in the Arts and Humanities do not always include an Abstract, and if they do, it might just be the first paragraph of the introduction. If not included, move onto the Introduction. Make sure to skim through the section headings, if they are there. This will give you an idea of the organization of the article as well as a general idea of themes.

2. Intro & Conclusion

Next, read the intro and the conclusion

Learn more about the topic of study and what the authors learned through their research.

Applies to both sciences and humanities:

• These two sections give you the background information for the topic of the article as well as what happened in the study.
• The introduction includes info about previous studies/papers that relate to the current one.
• The conclusion will provide a summary of the the study findings or analysis and an explanation of how their research contributes to their specific field of study.
• By reading the conclusion you see whether the study answered the original research question and what the authors see as the next steps in their research.

3. Look at the Data

Take a look at results, i.e. tables, charts, graphs or images 

Get a better idea of the results of the research or analytical study. 

For the Sciences:

• Closely look at the visual representations of the data. See what conclusions you come to and make note of them. When you read through the entire article, compare your own conclusions to what the authors saw in their results and data.

For the Humanities:

• The article may not present numeric data however, there might be other visual representations of what the scholars are studying. For example, reproductions of art pieces, or excerpts from primary sources or literary pieces.These are worth looking at to see the materials being studied.

4. Read the Article from Start to Finish

Do an in-depth reading

Now that you have pre-read some of the article and are sure it relates to your research topic, do an in-depth reading. 

Applies to both sciences and humanities

• Read the article from start to finsih.
• Take notes.
• Summarize sections or paragraphs.
• Keep a subject dictionary or the Internet/Wikipedia close by. If you come across any unfamiliar terms, you can quickly look them up.  
• Keep track of the citation information of the articles you do read and want to use in your research. Look at the References/Works Cited list. You may find additional scholarly articles related to your research. 

Reverse Oreo Method

Scholarly articles are structured in the reverse of an Oreo, meaning that the “good stuff” is on the outside:

The “dry stuff” is on the inside of the article – the Methodology and the Results. A key point of the scientific method is that results must be able to be replicated to be valid, so Methodology shows exactly how the study might be reproduced, but sheds little light on the big picture, unless you are replicating the experiment. Statistical analysis in the Results are important, but is typically just the math verifying the significance of the results.

From: Amelia V. Gallucci-Cirio Library , Fitchburg State University

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Communication Research Strategies

• Comm Research Strategies
• The research process
• Defining your topic and crafting your research question
• Identifying search terms from your question
• Broaden or narrow your search
• Research methods
• Find background information
• Find journalism data and polls
• Find journal articles
• Find books and ebooks
• Find U.S. news articles
• Find international news articles
• Interlibrary loan
• How to distinguish between types of journal articles
• Components of a scholarly article, and things to consider when reading one
• Critically evaluating articles & other resources
• Literature reviews (opens a new guide) This link opens in a new window
• Annotated bibliographies
• Writing tools
• Citing sources (opens a new guide) This link opens in a new window
• Associated Press Style Manual
• Understanding & Avoiding Plagiarism (opens a new guide) This link opens in a new window

Contact me for research assistance

Components of a scholarly article

• Experimentation
• Results, analysis, & discussion
• Limitations
• Conclusion(s)

“What is this article about?”

Abstract : Most articles start with a paragraph called the “abstract”, which very briefly summarizes the whole article.

Introduction : This section introduces the research question under consideration in the article, and discusses what the article contributes to existing knowledge within the field.

Modified from the Department of Sociology, SUNY Brockport: https://www.brockport.edu/academics/sociology/journal.html

“What do we already know about this topic and what is left to discover?”

Literature review : the authors will review the existing research and theory on the topic, either as part of the introduction, or after the introduction under its own subtitle. The review of literature is meant to discuss previous work on the topic, point out what questions remain, and relate the research presented in the rest of the article to the existing literature.

“How did the author do the research?  Why this way and not this other way?”

Methodology : There is always some discussion of the methods used by the authors to conduct the study being reported.  If these is any sort of control group being used as part of the methodology, it will be described here.

"What specifically did the authors do?"

Experimentation : A description of the experimentation in which the authors engaged.  This section will report any data produced by the experiment, be it numerical data, qualitative response data, etc.  Data comes in many different forms.

“What did the authors find?  What did their findings reveal or say in response to their research question?”

Results, analysis, & discussion : A section or multiple sections will be devoted to analyzing the experiment that was conducted, as well as its results.  These sections then discuss the results, and what the analysis of these results revealed.

"What limitations does this research have, and how might they affect the conclusions that may be drawn from this research?"

Limitations: A description of any limitations of the experimentation in which the authors engaged, and how these limitations may affect the conclusions that may be drawn from this experimentation.

“What does it all mean and why is it important?”

Discussion and Conclusion : Articles typically end by discussing what the results mean and how the study contributes to existing knowledge. Answers to research questions are addressed in this section, as is whether any hypotheses were supported or not. The conclusion typically places the research in a larger context and discusses where future research on the topic may be headed.

Things to consider when reading a scholarly article / Shortcuts to reading journal articles

• Things to consider when reading a scholarly article
• Shortcuts to reading journal articles

Owen Lin. (2012, May 23). Deep Thoughts. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/owen-pics/8406656015/. Used under the Creative Commons License.

• Know your research question or argument.  Though your question/argument may change or evolve as you delve deeper into the research process, you will want to have a solid idea of your research focus.  
• You don't have to read the entire article in order.  Start with the abstract which will give you a general summary of the article. If the abstract seems relevant then move to the conclusion or discussion section of the article to gain a better understanding of the article's main claims. At this point if the article does not seem relevant or useful then discard it. However, if the article does seem useful then spend as much time as necessary reading the article.  
• Read critically.  What is the author's argument? You will need to use your judgment when evaluating each source of information. Further research may be necessary if you find the author to be biased or you do not believe the validity of their argument.  
• Read the reference section.  Reading the references or works cited may lead you to other useful resources. You might also get a better understanding of the major players in the area you are researching.  
• Take notes.  How you do this is up to you. Make sure you keep your research question and argument in mind so you can be more efficient when taking notes. Created by Rachel Arteaga, for CSU Chico: http://libguides.csuchico.edu/c.php?g=462359&p=3163509

• Read the abstract first : Titles don’t always give much information. The abstract should give you just enough information to let you know the basics of the article. From this you will know whether you should read on or look elsewhere for your project. Some journals print a list of keywords pertaining to the article as well. These are further clues about the article.  
• Read the introduction and discussion/conclusion next : These sections will give you the main argument of the article, which should be helpful in determining its relevance to you and your project. You’ll also get a glimpse of the findings of the research being reported.  
• Read about the methods next : If what you’ve read so far interests you, get a sense of how the research was done. Is it a qualitative or quantitative project? What data are the study based on?  
• Read the Analysis and results next : If you decide that you are committed to this article, you should read in more detail about this research.

Created by the Department of Sociology, SUNY Brockport: https://www.brockport.edu/academics/sociology/journal.html

What makes information peer-reviewed vs. scholarly vs. non-scholarly? Which type of source should I use?

• What makes information peer-reviewed vs. scholarly vs. non-scholarly?
• Which type of source should I use?

There is a nuanced distinction between peer-review and scholarship, which typically doesn't matter when evaluating sources for possible citation in your own work.  Peer-review is a process through which editors of a journal have other experts in the field evaluate articles submitted to the journal for possible publication.  Different journals have different ways of defining an expert in the field.  Scholarly works, by contrast have an editorial process, but this process does not involve expert peer-reviewers.  Rather, one or more editors, who are themselves often highly decorated scholars in a field, evaluate submissions for possible publication.  This editorial process can be more economically driven than a peer-review process, with a greater emphasis on marketing and selling the published material, but as a general rule this distinction is trivial with regard to evaluating information for possible citation in your own work.

What is perhaps a more salient way of thinking about the peer-review / scholarship distinction is to recognize that while peer-reviewed information is typically highly authoritative, and is generally considered "good" information, the absence of a peer-review process doesn't automatically make information "bad."  More specifically, the only thing the absence of a peer-review process means is that information published in this manner is not peer-reviewed.  Nothing more.  Information that falls into this category is sometimes referred to as "non-scholarly" information -- but again, that doesn't mean this information is somehow necessarily problematic.

Where does that leave you in terms of deciding what type of information to use in producing your own work?  That is a highly individual decision that you must make.  The Which type of source should I use?  tab in this box offers further guidance on answering this question, though it is important to be aware that many WSU instructors will only consider peer-reviewed sources to be acceptable in the coursework you turn in .  You can ask your instructor for his or her thoughts on the types of sources s/he will accept in student work.

Image:  Martin Grater. (2017, Nov. 1). Deep Thought. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/152721954@N05/24304490568/. Used under the Creative Commons License.

Your topic and research question or thesis statement will guide you on which resources are best.  Sources can be defined as primary, secondary and tertiary levels away from an event or original idea. Researchers may want to start with tertiary or secondary source for background information. Learning more about a topic will help most researchers make better use of primary sources.

While articles from scholarly journals are often the most prominent of the sources you will consider incorporating into your coursework, they are not the only sources available to you.  Which sources are most appropriate to your research is a direct consequence of they type of research question you decide to address.  In other words, while most university-level papers will require you to reference scholarly sources, not all will.  A student in an English course writing a paper analyzing Bob Dylan's lyrics, for example, may find an interview with Dylan published in Rolling Stone magazine a useful source to cite alongside other scholarly works of literary criticism.

The WSU University Libraries' What Sources Should I Use? handout, as well as the other sub-tabs under the  Evaluating information  section of this guide (which is indeed the section you are currently viewing) offer further guidance on understanding and identifying scholarly resources, and comparing them against different criteria to evaluate if they will be of value to your research.  How many non-scholarly works (if any) you are at liberty to cite alongside scholarly ones is often a question to ask of your professor.  Some may not want you to cite any, whereas others may be ok with some non-scholarly works cited alongside scholarly ones.

Image:  Brett Woods. (2006, Jan. 6). Deep Thoughts. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/brettanicus/87653641/. Used under the Creative Commons License.

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Evaluating Information

• Understanding Primary and Secondary Sources
• Exploring and Evaluating Popular, Trade, and Scholarly Sources

Reading a Scholarly Article

Common components of original research articles, while you read, reading strategies, reading for citations, further reading, learning objectives.

This page was created to help you:

Identify the different parts of a scholarly article

Efficiently analyze and evaluate scholarly articles for usefulness

This page will focus on reading scholarly articles — published reports on original research in the social sciences, humanities, and STEM fields. Reading and understanding this type of article can be challenging. This guide will help you develop these skills, which can be learned and improved upon with practice.

We will go over:

There are many different types of articles that may be found in scholarly journals and other academic publications. For more, see:

• Types of Information Sources

Reading a scholarly article isn’t like reading a novel, website, or newspaper article. It’s likely you won’t read and absorb it from beginning to end, all at once.

Instead, think of scholarly reading as inquiry, i.e., asking a series of questions as you do your research or read for class. Your reading should be guided by your class topic or your own research question or thesis.

For example, as you read, you might ask yourself:

• What questions does it help to answer, or what topics does it address?
• Are these relevant or useful to me?
• Does the article offer a helpful framework for understanding my topic or question (theoretical framework)?
• Do the authors use interesting or innovative methods to conduct their research that might be relevant to me?
• Does the article contain references I might consult for further information?

In Practice

Scanning and skimming are essential when reading scholarly articles, especially at the beginning stages of your research or when you have a lot of material in front of you.

Many scholarly articles are organized to help you scan and skim efficiently. The next time you need to read an article, practice scanning the following sections (where available) and skim their contents:

• The abstract: This summary provides a birds’ eye view of the article contents.
• The introduction:  What is the topic(s) of the research article? What is its main idea or question?
• The list of keywords or descriptors
• Methods: How did the author(s) go about answering their question/collecting their data?
• Section headings:  Stop and skim those sections you may find relevant.
• Figures:  Offer lots of information in quick visual format.
• The conclusion:  What are the findings and/or conclusions of this article?

Mark Up Your Text

Read with purpose.

• Scanning and skimming with a pen in hand can help to focus your reading.
• Use color for quick reference. Try highlighters or some sticky notes. Use different colors to represent different topics.
• Write in the margins, putting down thoughts and questions about the content as you read.
• Use digital markup features available in eBook platforms or third-party solutions, like Adobe Reader or Hypothes.is.

Categorize Information

Create your own informal system of organization. It doesn’t have to be complicated — start basic, and be sure it works for you.

• Jot down a few of your own keywords for each article. These keywords may correspond with important topics being addressed in class or in your research paper.  
• Write keywords on print copies or use the built-in note taking features in reference management tools like Zotero and EndNote.  
• Your keywords and system of organization may grow more complex the deeper you get into your reading.

Highlight words, terms, phrases, acronyms, etc. that are unfamiliar to you. You can highlight on the text or make a list in a notetaking program.

• Decide if the term is essential to your understanding of the article or if you can look it up later and keep scanning.

You may scan an article and discover that it isn’t what you thought it was about. Before you close the tab or delete that PDF, consider scanning the article one more time, specifically to look for citations that might be more on-target for your topic.  

You don’t need to look at every citation in the bibliography — you can look to the literature review to identify the core references that relate to your topic. Literature reviews are typically organized by subtopic within a research question or thesis. Find the paragraph or two that are closely aligned with your topic, make note of the author names, then locate those citations in the bibliography or footnote.

See the Find Articles page for what to do next:

• Find Articles

See the Citation Searching page for more on following a citation trail:

• Citation Searching
• Taking notes effectively. [blog post] Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD
• How to read an academic paper. [video] UBCiSchool. 2013
• How to (seriously) read a scientific paper. (2016, March 21). Science | AAAS.
• How to read a paper. S. Keshav. 2007. SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 37, 3 (July 2007), 83–84.

This guide was designed to help you:

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How to Read an Academic Journal Article

• What Is in an Academic Journal
• Anatomy of a Journal Article

How to Read an Article

How you read an academic journal article depends on why you are reading it, or where you are in your own research. Rather than reading the whole thing from beginning to end, you can save time and effort by focusing on the parts relevant to your needs at the time, and skim or skip other parts. If you approach your reading strategically, you can read a lot without actually reading all that much. You should end up reading more abstracts than articles, skimming more articles than you read, and reading more articles than you cite.

Consider why and when you are reading:

Why: Are you constructing an original experiment of your own? Building on the work of others to construct your own argument? Writing a critical or analytical review of work done on a topic? Looking for a methodology or a theoretical approach for your own study?

When: Are you new to the topic? Formulating ideas for your own research? Evaluating articles to select the best ones to use? Writing up your results?

In general, your research and reading will be in three stages:

Search – Familiarize yourself with a topic and the work done on that topic.

Select – Pick the articles most likely to be useful for your own project.

Study – In-depth analysis of content you will be using in your own project.

But note that these are not exclusive steps. While searching, you may want to jump right into an in-depth reading of a particularly interesting article. While studying your selected articles, you may think of more ideas you want to find articles about.

non-Standard – Articles in humanities often look different from most science and social science articles, so, though the general strategies for reading are the same, specifics can vary and what to look for may be different, so use this section below for how to apply the general strategies to read humanities articles.

Stages of Reading an Academic Journal Article

• non-Standard

At this stage, you are casting a broad net to find many possibly relevant articles.

Think of keywords to describe your idea for a topic or your proposed hypothesis. Use OneSearch or select an appropriate subject database and try different combinations of keywords. 

Before even retrieving any articles, read titles, abstracts, and keywords in your search results. Find the broad questions concerning the topic: what is being studied, what is being found, what are the current controversies, how has research on the topic changed and developed over time, what language do researchers use? Look for more terms to use for more and better focused searches.

Look for review articles (the word ‘review’ is usually in the title) on the topic. If you find any, read them first: they will give you a systematic overview of work done on the topic, and list possible sources you can use.

After reading enough abstracts to get a broad overview of what’s out there, pick the most interesting articles based on titles and abstracts.

But don’t read those articles start to finish. Just read the introduction and especially the literature review section (usually part of the Introduction, but sometimes in a separate section following the introduction). The introduction explains the purpose and the broader context of the study, and the literature review provides a brief systematic summary of what others have published on the article’s topic to show how this study relates to other work on the topic.

Then scan the bibliography to see who they are citing. If any titles look especially interesting, look up those articles. Note if the same articles or authors keep showing up in lots of bibliographies – these are likely key sources for the topic.

Use what you learn during the ‘search’ phase to revise/refine your topic, research question, or hypothesis, and also for more searching.

After reading enough abstracts to get a broad overview of what’s out there, use those abstracts to pick the articles potentially most useful for your project. But, again, don't read them from start to finish. At this point, you want to narrow down the potentially most interesting articles to the actually most interesting which will be worth a lot of time and effort to focus on.

Read (or re-read) the introduction, focusing on the specific purpose of the study: what question(s) is it trying to answer? What is the main argument and hypothesis? What is unique about this study, what does it contribute to existing knowledge? And, does this matter for your project?

Next, read the discussion and conclusion sections. Now that you have used your initial searching phase to construct a good general mental framework for the topic, you can better recognize the significance of an article's conclusions, and better grasp the author's discussion of the findings. You are looking to answer the questions: what does this study mean and why is it important? Also, is it important for your project?

Somewhere in the discussion or conclusion section, the author should address the limitations of the study, i.e. not just what can be concluded but what cannot be concluded, along with any potential weaknesses of the methodology or results for supporting the conclusions. This can help you judge how useful the article will be for your project. In addition, authors usually point out new further questions resulting from the current study. You can use this part to come up with ideas for your own project to explore.

At this point, you are most likely not interested in the contents of the methodology or results section, at least not enough to read them carefully, but they may be worth quickly skimming, especially if you know of something specific to look for. For example, if you have a particular methodology in mind for your own study, you can see whether others have used that methodology. If you know you will need data of a particular type, you can check to see if it is included. In fact, if you are, for example, investigating a particular methodology you want to use, you may want to search specifically for studies using that methodology, even if they are not about a related topic; in that case, you would be interested only in the methodology section of a paper.

Now you can select the best articles from your scanning and skimming for careful study.

On this reading, skip the abstract and introduction and go straight to the methodology section. Read it with at least enough attention to understand how they carried out the study. If it is a methodology you want to use, read it with even more care, enough to be able to apply the methodology to your study (you may need to consult other sources with more extensive instructions on the methodology; if so, see if the article cites such sources). 

Next, read the results section closely and carefully. Before you go on to read the authors' discussion and conclusions, do your own analysis of the results. You can use their method of analysis or apply another appropriate method for analyzing the type of results generated by the study and reported in the article. What can you conclude, and not conclude, from your analysis of the results?

Now, carefully and critically read the authors' discussion and conclusion in conjunction with the methodology and results. Consider, for example, whether their methodology is appropriate for what they are trying to establish (e.g., sample size and selection, variables, procedures, equipment). Are the data presented clearly, and do the data make sense given their methodology? Are their analyses and arguments supported by the data? Have they missed any confounding variables? Are the results reliable (same results over time) and valid (measure what it is supposed to measure)? The specific questions you ask will depend on the type of study, but be as rigorous as you can in your critique.

Also consider: how well do their conclusions match yours?

Read through the bibliography to see if there are any significant or interesting looking titles you didn’t find in earlier searches.

By now, you should know the article well enough to quickly scan through it and whatever notes you have taken to find relevant and important parts to focus on and use as you work on your project.

Research in the humanities is different from scientific research, so the format of journal articles is also often different. Scientists typically conduct experiments on or observations of some part of the natural world, whereas humanists analyze the meanings of human creations. Social scientists studying the social world typically do experimental or observational research but may do analytical research, and sometimes both.

Humanities (and some social science) articles are thus more typically in the form of essays rather than reports of experiments or observations. Their goal is to establish a point or defend a thesis by logical argumentation and analysis of textual etc. evidence. Humanities articles are also typically referred to as “secondary literature” which critically analyzes primary sources (artistic creations or original records of the object, event, phenomenon, etc., being studied), whereas science and most social science articles are referred to as “primary literature” which present the authors’ original analysis of the data (experimental results, field measurements, surveys, etc.) which they collected or created.

Without an experiment to report, a humanities article will not have sections for experimental methods and results, though it will often at least briefly discuss the analytical method(s) the author used. It will typically have:

• An introduction posing a question to be answered or a problem to be addressed. Generally, this includes a literature review putting the question in context by pointing out a problem or gap in previous explanations or interpretations. Then the article states the thesis it will argue for. You may find a single sentence stating the thesis, but the thesis is often described over several sentences or a paragraph or two.
• A discussion presenting a detailed analysis of evidence from primary sources used to build an argument to support the thesis.  
• A conclusion to summarize the results of the analysis and explain the significance of the argument. Limitations and qualifications of arguments, or interesting observations not central to the argument, are often presented in footnotes here and through the discussion.
• A bibliography listing sources used.

But the sections may not be labeled that way, or there may be many sections or sub-sections labeling different aspects of the analysis or steps of the argument presented. Also, the introduction, discussion, and conclusion can blend into each other rather than being separate sections. So in general, searching for, selecting, and studying humanities articles is not as systematic as for science and most social science articles. Here are some modifications of the standard steps:

Search: Humanities articles often do not include abstracts, so you cannot always rely only on what is presented in the database you are searching to judge whether it is worth retrieving the full article. If there is no abstract, there may at least be subject tags in the database record, but you may need to open the full article and scan the introductory section to get a better idea of what the article is about and to get more ideas for terms to search.

You may find review articles (the phrase “literature review” or “review of the literature” is usually in the title), but these are not as common in humanities. 

Select: Quickly page through the article to see how it is structured. This is easier if there are many labelled sections and sub-sections, but you may need to skim around in the first and last pages of the article to find where the introductory thesis and resulting conclusions are explicated. Skim/read the introduction and conclusion enough to determine whether the article as a whole is relevant to your project, or scan the full article to see whether it includes topics significant to your project.  

Study: Start with a relatively quick skim/read through the full article, noting the general structure of the argument: what is it using for evidence, how is it analyzing that evidence and connecting the pieces into an argument, etc. Now you can conduct a close reading of the article and its argument to see how the details fit, and analyze how well the argument supports the thesis. Or, if you are interested only in one or a few topics covered in the article, you know what sections to focus on for a close reading. Also, read the footnotes in any section of the article relevant to your project.

• << Previous: Anatomy of a Journal Article
• Last Updated: Oct 27, 2023 11:59 AM
• URL: https://libguides.wesleyan.edu/readanarticle

How to Read Scholarly Articles: Strategies for Reading

• What is Scholarly?
• The Anatomy of a Scholarly Article
• Strategies for Reading
• Where to Find Scholarly Articles

How to Read

The fact is, these scholars are experts in their field writing for other experts. They are using specialized language that can be difficult for someone new to understand. So, you can sit down with an article and start reading, but you may become discouraged pretty quickly.

The tips below are to help you read scholarly articles STRATEGICALLY . These tips can help you approach a scholarly text for easier reading and better understanding. 

1. Abstract

Read the Abstract first.  The Abstract will preview the entire article, makes it easier to judge whether it is relevant.

For the Sciences:

Titles can only tell you so much about the content of the article. The Abstract acts as a preview for the entire article, including the methods and results. By reading the Abstract first, you can get a better idea of what the article is actually about, if it relates to what you are researching, and whether it is worth your time to read the rest of it.

For the Humanities:

• Articles in the Arts and Humanities do not always include an Abstract, and if they do, it might just be the first paragraph of the introduction. If not included, move onto the Introduction. Make sure to skim through the section headings, if they are there. This will give you an idea of the organization of the article as well as a general idea of themes.

2. Intro and Conclusion

Next, read the Introduction and Conclusion.  Learn more about the topic of study and what the authors found out in the process.

Applies for both sciences and humanities:

• These two sections give you the background information you need for the topic of the article as well as what happened in the study. The introduction also includes info about previous studies/papers that relate to the current one, which gives you, the reader, a context. By reading the conclusion you see whether the study answered the original research question and what the authors see as the next steps in the scholarship.

Literature review : An overview of previous scholarship on the present topic. Gives both author and reader a context for where the article falls in the literature. Likely to be a separate section within the introduction or right after it.

Take a look at the tables, charts and graphs.

Get a better idea of the results of the research or analytical study. 

• Closely look at the visual representations of the data. See what conclusions you come to and make note of them. When you read through the entire article, compare your conclusions to what the authors saw in their results and data.
• Usually, there is no numeric data that the authors present in their results. However, there might be other visual representations of what the scholars are studying. For example, reproductions of art pieces, or excerpts from primary sources or literary pieces. These are worth looking at to see the materials being studied.

4. Read the Whole Thing

Read it! (For real this time.)

Now that you have pre-read some of the article and are sure it relates to your research topic, read the whole thing. It still might not be easy, but it will not be as hard as if you were reading it with no context.

Some more tips about reading:

• Summarize sections or paragraphs
• Keep a subject dictionary, your textbook glossary or the Internet/Wikipedia close by. If you come across any unfamiliar terms, you can quickly look them up.
• Keep track of the citation information of the articles you do read and want to use in your paper or assignment. This will make life a lot easier at the end of the project. 
• Reading in the Humanities and Social Sciences Short guide from Trent University with helpful questions to think about to get the most of reading scholarly articles.
• Reading and Annotating Slideshow from the University of New England. Introduces methods of reading and how to annotate materials.
• A Guide to Reading and Analysing Academic Articles A guide from Yukon College, discussing the steps for effective reading of academic articles
• How to Read a Psychology Article Class website from UIC. Includes specific information about how to read articles in Psychology
• Anatomy of a Scholarly Article Tutorial on how to identify parts of a scholarly article. Created by North Carolina State University.
• << Previous: The Anatomy of a Scholarly Article
• Next: Where to Find Scholarly Articles >>
• Last Updated: May 8, 2024 9:59 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.ccc.edu/hw/scholarlyarticles

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: Reading Research Effectively

• Purpose of Guide
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• The Research Problem/Question
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Evaluating Sources
• Reading Research Effectively
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Is it Peer-Reviewed?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism [linked guide]
• Annotated Bibliography
• Grading Someone Else's Paper

Reading a Scholarly Article or Research Paper

Reading Research Publications Effectively

It's easy to feel overwhelmed and frustrated when first reading a scholarly article or research paper. The text is dense and complex and often includes abstract or convoluted language . In addition, the terminology may be confusing or applied in a way that is unfamiliar. To help overcome these challenges w hen you first read an article or research paper, focus on asking specific questions about each section. This strategy can help with overall comprehension and understanding how the content relates [or does not relate] to the research problem you are investigating. This approach will also help identify key themes as you read additional studies on the same topic. As you review more and more studies about your topic, the process of understanding and critically evaluating the research will become easier because the content of what you review will begin to coalescence around common themes and patterns of analysis.

Think about the following in this general order:

1.  Read the Abstract

An abstract summarizes the basic content of a scholarly article or research paper. Questions to consider when reading the abstract are: What is this article about? What is the working hypothesis or thesis? Is this related to my question or area of research? The abstract can be used to help filter out sources that may have appeared useful when you began searching for information but, in reality, are not relevant.

2.  Identify the Research Problem and Underlying Questions? 

If, after reading the abstract, you believe the paper may be useful, focus on examining the research problem and identifying the questions the author is trying to address. Look for information that is relevant to your research problem and make note of how and in what way this information relates to what you are investigating.

3.  Read the Introduction and Discussion/Conclusion

The introduction provides the main argument and theoretical framework of the article. Questions to consider for the introduction include what do we already know about this topic and what is left to discover? What other research has been conducted about this topic? How is this research unique? Will this study tell me anything new related to the research problem I am investigating?

Questions to ask yourself while reading the discussion and conclusion sections include what does the study mean and why is it important? What are the weaknesses in their argument? Does the conclusion contain any recommendations for future research and do you believe conclusions about the significance of the study and its findings are valid?

4.  Read about the Methods/Methodology

If what you have read so far closely relates to your research problem, then move on to reading about how the author(s) gathered information for their research. Questions to consider include how did the author do the research? Was it a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods project? What data is the study based on? Could I repeat their work and is all the information available to repeat the study?

5.  Read about the Results and Analysis

Next, read the outcome the research and how it was discussed and analyzed. If any non-textual elements [e.g., graphs, charts, tables, etc.] are confusing, focus on the explanations about them in the text. Questions to consider are what did the author find and how did they find it? Are the results presented in a factual and unbiased way? Does their analysis of results agree with the data presented? Is all the data present? What conclusions do you formulate from this data and does it match with the author's conclusions?

6.  Review the References

The list of references, or works cited, shows you the basis of prior research used by the author(s) to support their study. The references can be an effective way to identify additional sources of information on the topic. Questions to ask include what other research studies should I review? What other authors are respected in this field, i.e., who is cited most often by others? What other research should be explored to learn about issues I am unclear or need more information about?

Getting into the right mindset to read scientific papers quickly:

Before you start anything, you need to isolate your singular goal for reading papers in the first place. Otherwise, you’ll be passively reading every paper that comes up rather than hunting for specific details. Don’t be a forager, consuming anything edible that crosses your path. Be a hunter: have a specific target that keeps you selective, efficient, and guides every step you take.

Most of these tips are designed to help you focus on extracting value efficiently so you won’t give up after two papers! So, what is your goal here? Is it:

• Getting a solid foundation in your field?
• Collecting the newest research for a cutting-edge literature review?
• Finding ideas and inspiration to further your own research?  

I’ll be honest here: The first dozen papers of a new subject will be a grind. But it gets easier, I promise! When you find yourself blasting through the “template” introduction and recognizing citations you’ve already read, you know you’re close to being an expert. At this point, if you’re struggling to understand a new paper in the field, it’s likely the authors’ fault, not yours. 

Keep in mind that academics aren’t exactly known for concise writing. Practice skimming paragraphs for high-value verbs, numerical values and claims. Skip over wordy low-value prose like “We thus appear to have potentially demonstrated a novel and eco-friendly synthesis method for…” It’s easy to fall back to a casual fiction-reading mentality. Try to stay in a high-energy search mode and you’ll be effectively done in half the time.

Later on I’ll reference our journal article notes template , which I used to synthesize notes for my literature review. Go ahead now and open it in Google Drive where you can download and edit it for free. We just ask that you drop your email so that we can stay in touch on new helpful resources and awesome new tools for scientists.

How do you read scientific papers effectively?

Below are my tips for how to read scientific papers most effectively. I used this methodology to write a critical literature review in a brand new field in about 4 months, citing over 150 papers. My first-author paper now has nearly 1000 citations in only six years since publication, making it my advisor’s most highly-cited paper in his 30-year career! You can do this. Just keep reading: 

1. Briefly read the Abstract

The abstract is your most condensed look at the paper. Read it quickly and highlight any claims or phrases that you want more details on. I like to copy the entire abstract text or screenshot into the journal article notes template for later reference. It also helps to copy the keyword text into the template or your citation manager tags so you can search for them later. Things to read for:

• Is the research applicable to what you need right now?
• Are the findings significant enough to help you with your goal?
• What is the most interesting aspect of this paper?

2. Carefully read the Conclusion

Reading the conclusion gives you an instant look at the quality of the paper. Do the authors seem to make claims bigger than appropriate for the scope of the paper? Do they use hyperbole to inflate the importance of the work? Are the results not clearly stated? These could be red flags identifying a poor quality paper. 

Highlight and copy a few of the most important phrases or sentences out of the conclusion into the journal article template in the first bulleted section or into the notes section of your reference manager. Look for:

• What the authors think they accomplished in this work.
• The reasoning behind their results. Any useful insights?
• Ideas for future experiments.  

3. Identify the most important figures and dig through the Results & Discussion for more detail

If you’re still interested after the first two steps, start digging into the results and discussion for more details. Before making the deep dive, write down the specific questions you need to answer in your notes section. Search the paper for those answers, writing down new questions as they come to mind. 

One favorite strategy here is to look at each figure, read the caption and then dig through the text for supporting information (use Ctrl+F for “Fig. 3”, for example). The figures should tell the story as well as (and more quickly than) the text. 

Copy and paste specific claims you may want to quote or paraphrase later. Isolate what the authors think they did from your own commentary and summarize it in your own words.

4. Search the Methods section to answer questions if necessary

The Methods section is usually the most tedious and tiring to read. That’s why we don’t do it first. Only go through it when necessary or you’ll never get to the 100 other papers you just downloaded.

Go back through the Methods when:

• This paper showed a different result than another similar paper, and the methods may have caused the difference. 
• You’re sure you want to include the paper and you want to be critical of the way they conducted their experiments. 
• You may want to replicate their experiment in your own work.

Make sure to note anything unique, odd, or unexpected in their methods. Maybe it will lead to a breakthrough in your own work or help explain a surprise result!

5. Summarize your thoughts and critiques

Re-read your notes so far to check for any missed questions. Go back and extract sentences or paragraphs of the paper that you want to challenge so you can quickly find them verbatim. Write your own thoughts and questions around those topics so you can copy them into your literature review later. Ideas for notes:

• What would you have done differently in the experiment or data analysis?
• Is there an obvious gap or follow-up experiment?
• Does this paper uniquely contribute to the field’s body of knowledge? What is its contribution?

6. Copy important figures into your notes

This is the most important step but many don’t do this. Figures are the anchors of every good journal article and the authors who spend the most time making excellent figures also will get cited the most often in review papers. This leads to even more citations from experimental articles. My secret for getting the most citations of my review paper was to spend more time than typical finding or creating the best possible figures for explaining the content. You can do this too, it just takes time!

The best reference manager Zotero doesn’t have an “add image” button in the “Notes” section but you can actually screenshot the image with the Snipping Tool then Ctrl+v paste it into the notes section! Now when you come back to the paper you’ll get an instant look at the most significant figures. If you know you want to use one of these figures in your review, add a tag to the paper like “Figure Rev. Paper 1”.

7. Pick important references (especially review papers) out of the Introduction and Discussion

Now that you have a good understanding of the paper, it’s time to start tidying things up and thinking of where to go next. Skim the introduction for helpful references or check the first 5-10 listed in the References section to find mostly review papers you can use for new leads. Go and download these into an “Unread review papers” folder in your citation manager for when you get stuck later. 

Then, go to the journal/library website and check for new papers that have cited this paper. This will help you follow the trail of a specific research topic to see how it’s developing. Download the interesting ones and put them in an “unread” folder for this very specific research topic. In Zotero, you can even tag the paper as “related” to the current paper for quick access later.  

8. Clean up the metadata if you plan on citing this paper later

If there’s a chance you’ll cite this paper later, make sure to clean up the metadata so your word processor citation plugin creates a clean reference section. Author initials may be backward, special characters in the title may be corrupted, the year or issue of the journal could be missing or the “type” of citation could be wrong (listed as a book instead of journal article) which would change the format.

Fully tag the paper using whatever system you’ve come up with. Keywords, chemicals, characterization methods or annotation tags like “Best” can all be useful. One other trick I used was to come up with an acronym for the paper I was about to write - “NMOBH” for example - and use that as a tag in any paper that I planned to cite later.

Being methodical in your post-read organization will save you many hours and endless frustration later on. Follow these tips on how to organize your research papers and you’ll be a pro in no time. You’re almost done, but don’t skip this part!

9. Take a break, then repeat!

This methodology makes it a little easier to get through a paper quickly once you get some practice at it. But what about 10 papers? 100?! You can’t do all of your reading in a week. I set a habit for myself over the summer to read two papers a day for 2 months. If I missed a day, I made it up the next day. This keeps you fresh for each paper and less likely to miss important points because you’re falling asleep!

Get comfortable. I preferred to kick back on a couch or outside in a chair using my laptop in tablet mode so I had a long vertical screen and a stylus to highlight or circle things. Reading 2-column scientific articles on a 13 inch 16:9 laptop screen at a desk for hours on end is a special kind of torture that I just couldn’t endure. Change scenery often, try different beverages, take breaks, and move around!

Here are some bonus tips for breaking the monotony between papers:

• Pick your top few most controversial, confusing, or interesting papers and ask a colleague or advisor for their thoughts. Bring them some coffee to discuss it with you for another perspective. 
• Email the authors to ask a question or thank them for their contribution. This is a great way to make a connection. Don’t ask for too much on the first email or they may not respond - they are busy!  
• Reward yourself for every paper read. Maybe a small snack or a short walk around the block. Physically cross this paper off your to-do list so you internalize the good feeling of the accomplishment!

How do you choose which papers to read next?

So you’re downloading 15 new papers for every 1 paper you read? This could get out of control quickly! How do you keep up? Here are some tips for prioritization:

Google Scholar is an excellent tool for tracking citation trees and metrics that show the “importance” of each paper. Library portals or the journal websites can also be good for this.

• If you’re starting a search on a new topic, begin with a relevant review paper if one exists. Beware of reading too many review papers in a row! You’ll end up with an intimidating pile of citations to track down and it will be difficult to know where to start after a few-day break. 
• Prioritize experimental papers with high citation numbers, in journals with high impact factors and by authors with a high h-index (30+) published within the last 5 years. These papers will set the bar for every paper you read after. You can check the journal’s rank in your field by using Scimago . 
• Identify the most prominent authors in this field and find their most recent papers that may not have many citations (yet). This indicates where the field is heading and what the top experts are prioritizing. 
• After you’ve covered a lot of ground above, start taking more chances on less-established authors who may be taking new approaches or exploring new topics. By now you’ll be well-equipped to identify deficiencies in methods, hyperbolic claims, and arguments that are not well-supported by data. 

Final takeaways for how to read a scientific paper:

• Don't be a passive word-for-word reader. Be actively hunting and searching for info.
• Read in this order: Abstract, Conclusion, Figures, Results/Discussion, Methods.
• The figures are the anchors. Save the best ones to reproduce in your article and spend extra time to create your own summary figures to supercharge your chances of citation.
• Clean up the metadata and use a good tagging system to save time later. 
• Set your daily goal, reward yourself for finishing, and take breaks to avoid burnout!

Lastly, remember that this blog is sponsored by BioBox Analytics ! BioBox is a data analytics platform designed for scientists and clinicians working with next-generation-sequencing data. Design and run bioinformatic pipelines on demand, generate publication-ready plots, and discover insights using popular public databases. Get on the waitlist and be the first to access a free account at biobox.io !

What sections of a research paper should you read first?

The Abstract and Conclusion sections of a research paper give you a quick sense if you should continue spending time on the paper. Assess the quality of the research and whether the results are significant to your goals. If so, move to the most important Figures and find additional details in the Results and Discussion when necessary. 

What is the fastest way to read a research article?

Skim the Abstract and highlight anything of interest. Skip to the Conclusions and do the same. Write questions that pop up. Examine each Figure and find the in-line reference text for further details if needed for understanding. Then search the Results and Discussion for answers to your pre-written questions.  

What is the best citation manager software to use for my scientific papers?

I used Mendeley through grad school but recently Zotero seems to be more popular. Both are free and have all the features you need! EndNote is excellent but expensive, and if you lose your institutional license you’ll have a hard time transferring to one of the free offerings. Zotero is your best bet for long-term organizational success!

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Research Process

• Brainstorming
• Explore Google This link opens in a new window
• Explore Web Resources
• Explore Background Information
• Explore Books
• Explore Scholarly Articles
• Narrowing a Topic
• Primary and Secondary Resources
• Academic, Popular & Trade Publications
• Scholarly and Peer-Reviewed Journals
• Grey Literature
• Clinical Trials
• Evidence Based Treatment
• Scholarly Research
• Database Research Log
• Search Limits
• Keyword Searching
• Boolean Operators
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Reading a Scientific Article

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• Scholarly Publication
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Library Tutorial

• Reading a Scholarly Article Tutorial This interactive tutorial provides practice reading a scholarly or scientific article.

Additional Resources

• Anatomy of a Scholarly Article
• How to Read (and Understand) a Social Science Journal Article
• How to Read a Scientific Paper
• How to Read a Scientific Paper Interactive Tutorial
• How to Read Scientific Literature (YouTube Video)
• How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists See it in action - How to read a vaccine safety study: an example

General Dictionaries

• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
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Attempting to read a scientific or scholarly research article for the first time may seem overwhelming and confusing. This guide details how to read a scientific article step-by-step. First, you should not approach a scientific article like a textbook— reading from beginning to end of the chapter or book without pause for reflection or criticism. Additionally, it is highly recommended that you highlight and take notes as you move through the article. Taking notes will keep you focused on the task at hand and help you work towards comprehension of the entire article.

• Skim the article. This should only take you a few minutes. You are not trying to comprehend the entire article at this point, but just get a basic overview. You don’t have to read in order; the discussion/conclusions will help you to determine if the article is relevant to your research. You might then continue on to the Introduction. Pay attention to the structure of the article, headings, and figures.  
• Grasp the vocabulary. Begin to go through the article and highlight words and phrases you do not understand. Some words or phrases you may be able to get an understanding from the context in which it is used, but for others you may need the assistance of a medical or scientific dictionary. Subject-specific dictionaries available through our Library databases and online are listed below.  
• The abstract gives a quick overview of the article. It will usually contain four pieces of information: purpose or rationale of study (why they did it); methodology (how they did it); results (what they found); conclusion (what it means). Begin by reading the abstract to make sure this is what you are looking for and that it will be worth your time and effort.   
• The introduction gives background information about the topic and sets out specific questions to be addressed by the authors. You can skim through the introduction if you are already familiar with the paper’s topic.  
• The methods section gives technical details of how the experiments were carried out and serves as a “how-to” manual if you wanted to replicate the same experiments as the authors. This is another section you may want to only skim unless you wish to identify the methods used by the researchers or if you intend to replicate the research yourself.  
• The results are the meat of the scientific article and contain all of the data from the experiments. You should spend time looking at all the graphs, pictures, and tables as these figures will contain most of the data.  
• Lastly, the discussion is the authors’ opportunity to give their opinions. Keep in mind that the discussions are the authors’ interpretations and not necessarily facts. It is still a good place for you to get ideas about what kind of research questions are still unanswered in the field and what types of questions you might want your own research project to tackle. (See the Future Research Section of the Research Process for more information).  
•   Read the bibliography/references section. Reading the references or works cited may lead you to other useful resources. You might also get a better understanding of the basic terminology, main concepts, major researchers, and basic terminology in the area you are researching.  
• Have I taken time to understand all the terminology?
• Am I spending too much time on the less important parts of this article?
• Do I have any reason to question the credibility of this research?
• What specific problem does the research address and why is it important?
• How do these results relate to my research interests or to other works which I have read?  
• Read the article a second time in chronological order. Reading the article a second time will reinforce your overall understanding. You may even start to make connections to other articles that you have read on this topic.

Reading a Scholarly Article Workshop

This workshop presents effective techniques for reading and understanding a scholarly article, as well as locating definitions related to your research topic.

Subject-Specific Dictionaries

• Health Sciences
• Marriage & Family Science
• Research Methods
• Social Work

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Research 101: Getting Started: Reading Articles Effectively

• Choosing a Manageable Research Topic
• Developing Good Search Strategy
• Reading Articles Effectively
• Your Action Plan
• Where to Go From Here

On this Page

Effective Reading (video)  

How to Engage with Scholarly Articles

Take the Challenge

A Few More Tips: How to Engage with Scholarly Articles

• How to Quickly Scan & Evaluate a Scholarly Article (3-min. video) Take a look at this video from QVCC Library on the anatomy of an article & how to determine its usefulness for your paper.
• How to Read a Scholarly Article from a Database (5-min. video) Take a look at this video from Kishwaukee College Library on reading a scholarly article from a database.

Do you remember what you've listened to and read in the videos above? Take the challenge below!

What are the 6 steps to effective reading?

The 6 steps to effective reading are:

What are the typical parts of a scholarly article?

A scholarly article is typically made up of::

• Article title
• Author information
• Introduction
• Method/Methodology
• Discusion/Conclusion

What should you read first in a scholarly article to determine if the article is something you want to spend time reading carefully for your paper?

To get a better idea of what the article is about, take a look at the following:

• Article title - What's it about?
• Abstract - Get a quick summary of the article
• Conclusion section - What did the authors find out?
• References - What kind of sources did the authors use?
• Information about the Authors - Who are they & what are their credentials for writing on this topic?
• << Previous: Developing Good Search Strategy
• Next: Your Action Plan >>
• Last Updated: Nov 30, 2023 2:37 PM
• URL: https://ohiodominican.libguides.com/research101/getting-started

• How To Find Articles with Databases
• Video Learning
• Artificial Intelligence Tools
• Commercialization & Industry
• How To Evaluate Articles
• Search Tips, General
• Develop a Research Question
• How To Read A Scientific Paper
• How To Interpret Data
• How To Write A Lab Report
• How To Write A Scientific Paper
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• Systematic & Evideced-Based Reviews

Useful Sources

• How to (Seriously) Read a Scientific Paper
• How to Read a Scientific Article
• Infographic: How to Read a Scientific Paper

Reading a Scientific Paper

Reading a scientific paper can seem like a daunting task. However, learning how to properly read a scholarly article can make the process much easier! Understanding the different parts of a scientific article can help the reader to understand the material. 

• The title of the article can give the reader a lot of information about its contents, such as the topic, major ideas, and participants. 
• Abstracts help to summarize the article and give the reader a preview of the material they are about to read. The abstract is very important and should be read with care. 

Introduction

• What is the article's purpose being stated in the introduction?
• Why would this article be of interest to experts in the field?
• What is already known, or not known, about this topic? 
• What specifically is the hypothesis? If one is not given, what are the expectations of the author?
• Having these questions in mind when reading the introduction can help the reader gain an understanding of the article as a whole. A good research article will answer these questions in the introduction and be consistent with their explanation throughout the rest of the article. 
• What are the specific methods used by the researcher?
• Does the researcher provide a coherent and viable plan for their experiment?
• Has the author missed any variables that could effect the results of their findings?
• How do the methods in this article compare with similar articles?
• Ex: they are correlated and support the hypothesis, they contradict they hypothesis, ect. 
• If there are differences from the hypothesis, what differences did the researcher find?
• Are the findings described in an unbiased way?
• Is there new information presented that wasn't known before?
• Is the researcher unbiased in their presentation?
• Ex: More research needs to be done, the findings show a solution to a known problem, etc.
• What suggestions are made about future research? If no suggestions are made, should there be?
• The conclusion points out the important findings from the experiment or research. Occasionally, it will incorporated into the discussion section of the paper. 

General Tips

• Fully comprehending a scientific article will most likely take more than one read. Don't be discouraged if you don't understand everything the first time, reading scientific papers is a skill that is developed with practice. 
• Start with the broad and then to the specific. Begin by understanding the topic of the article before trying to dig through all the fine points the author is making. 
• Always read the tables, charts, and figures. These will give a visual clue to the methods and results sections of the paper and help you to understand the data. The author put these in the paper for a reason, don't dismiss their importance. 
• Don't be afraid to ask questions or look up definitions. If you do not understand a term or concept, do not be afraid to ask for help or look up an explanation. 
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The Empirical Research Paper: A Guide

Some good advice to get started, anatomy of a scholarly article.

• Designing Empirical Research
• Writing the Empirical Paper

Tutorials and Additional Resources

• How to read a scientific paper Tutorial - Purdue University
• How to read a scientific article -Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Communication
• How to read a scientific paper - Science Buddies.org
• Anatomy of a Scholarly Article Tutorial - NCSU Libraries
• How to read and understand a scientific paper
• How You Should Read Coronavirus Studies, or Any Science Paper Article from the New York Times
• Important Tools

Reading a scholarly article is more challenging than reading a newspaper, magazine, or blog. In order to fully understand the contents, a scholarly article will have to be re-read several times (even experienced researchers have to re-read articles)!

Some of the  challenges :

• Writing is really dense and highly technical
• Inclusion of references to previous experiments, findings, and techniques often sends readers on a back-and-forth hunt for references
• Not all researchers are skilled writers (unlike Journalists), who enjoy writing, and are comfortable writing in English. 

Some  important tools  to have on-hand to make reading an article so much easier:

• A   dictionary or an encyclopedia will allow you to understand any unclear terms or theories you encounter. 
• A textbook or an introductory-level book provide some background information written in a way that is easy to understand
• Access to a database such as Web of Science which will allow you to quickly access relevant and related articles. 
• Have a notepad and a pen/pencil handy so that you can take notes as you read. This will help you remember what is being discussed and you can write down any questions/concerns you have as you proceed

• Basic Anatomy
• Order for Reading
• Introduction

Exploratorium. (n.d.).  Sharing findings: The anatomy of a peer-reviewed paper.  Retrieved June 5 2014 from  http://www.exploratorium.edu/evidence

On your first reading of an empirical article, you can be selective in terms of what sections you want to read. During this first reading you do not want to read the article the novel from cover to back, as this will be inefficient. 

The following order in general should be used the first time you evaluate/read an article:

• If in a database, look at the Journal name, and any Subjects or Keyword s
• Introduction - the last paragraph will provide their research question and hypothesis
• Discussion -  in the first paragraph the authors will interpret the results of their study

At this point, you can stop and decide if the article suits your needs if yes continue:

      6. Methods

      7. Results

Then re-read the article as a whole from Introduction to Discussion   

A very short concise summary of the main points of the article . Usually contains an explanatory sentence regarding the logic behind the research, the research questions, who/what is being studied and how, and their main findings. 

This is always the first section of an article and may or may not be labeled "Introduction" or "literature review"

As the name implies, this section will introduce and provide the background knowledge and research (literature review and key terminology) behind the research topic in question. This section is critical for understanding the topic, its history, key studies, and the rationale behind the current research . 

Often in the final paragraphs, the authors will spell out their exact research question and if applicable, the hypotheses being addressed in this paper.

Also known as Materials or Research Design. Contains information on the subjects (participants) and specific enough information about HOW things were studied or manipulated (including specialized tools and techniques) that another researcher would be able to replicate the experiment. 

Although this section is usually found following the introduction, in some journals the Methods and Materials will be provided at the end of the paper before the References or as an Appendix. 

The Results (or Findings) section contains all of the information about the data that was collected during the experiment. This section is often really dense and contains very little in terms of explanatory sentences. To save space, a lot of the results (main and supplementary) will be displayed in the form of Figures or Tables.

Reading this section is essential in understanding exactly what data was collected, the statistics used, if they were appropriate, and the actual results of the tests. 

The Discussion section is where the authors, using the literature, will interpret the results/findings of their study and draw conclusions. 

Often the authors will also acknowledge the known or theoretical limitations of their study and will end by proposing future directions for research on their topic. 

Since the authors' are interpreting their results and providing their own opinion of the findings, not absolute facts, it is essential that you are critical of the conclusions the authors are making. 

Throughout the article, the researchers have provided in-text citations to already published research. In the References section, the full bibliographic information for each citation is provided so that readers can use this information to locate each reference.

This section is very useful in helping one understand the background and history of the research questions and what has been tried in the past or investigated. The References cited are also highly likely to be related or relevant to the topic at hand and is an efficient way to find additional scholarly information on a specific research topic. 

Note : if there is no Reference section (or Works Cited or Bibliography or extensive footnotes with complete citations), then the article would NOT be considered scholarly. 

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• Last Updated: May 29, 2024 4:03 PM
• URL: https://libguides.tulane.edu/empirical

Evaluating Information Sources

• Evaluate Your Sources
• Publication Types and Bias

Structure of Scientific Papers

Reading a scholarly article, additional reading tips, for more information.

• Reading Scholarly Articles
• Impact Factors and Citation Counts
• Predatory Publishing

Research papers generally follow a specific format. Here are the different parts of the scholarly article.

Abstract (Summary)

The abstract, generally written by the author(s) of the article, provides a concise summary of the whole article. Usually it highlights the focus, study results and conclusion(s) of the article. 

Introduction (Why)

In this section, the authors introduce their topic, explain the purpose of the study, and present why it is important, unique or how it adds to existing knowledge in their field. Look for the author's hypothesis or thesis here. 

Introduction - Literature Review (Who else)

Many scholarly articles include a summary of previous research or discussions published on this topic, called a "Literature Review".  This section outlines what others have found and what questions still remain.

Methodology  / Materials and Methods (How) 

Find the details of how the study was performed in this section. There should be enough specifics so that you could repeat the study if you wanted. 

Results   (What happened)

This section includes the findings from the study. Look for the data and statistical results in the form of tables, charts, and graphs. Some papers include an analysis here.

Discussion  / Analysis  (What it means)

This section should tell you what the authors felt was significant about their results. The authors analyze their data and describe what they believe it means.

Conclusion (What was learned)

Here the authors offer their final thoughts and conclusions and may include: how the study addressed their hypothesis, how it contributes to the field, the strengths and weaknesses of the study, and recommendations for future research. Some papers combine the discussion and conclusion.

A scholarly paper can be difficult to read. Instead of reading straight through, try focusing on the different sections and asking specific questions at each point.

What is your research question? 

When you select an article to read for a project or class, focus on your topic. Look for information in the article that is relevant to your research question. 

Read the abstract first  as it covers basics of the article. Questions to consider: 

• What is this article about? What is the working hypothesis or thesis?
• Is this related to my question or area of research?

Second: Read the introduction and discussion/conclusion.  These sections offer the main argument and hypothesis of the article. Questions to consider for the introduction: 

• What do we already know about this topic and what is left to discover?
• What have other people done in regards to this topic?
• How is this research unique?
• Will this tell me anything new related to my research question?

Questions for the discussion and conclusion: 

• What does the study mean and why is it important?
• What are the weaknesses in their argument?
• Is the conclusion valid?

Next: Read about the Methods/Methodology.  If what you've read addresses your research question, this should be your next section. Questions to consider:

• How did the author do the research? Is it a qualitative or quantitative project?
• What data are the study based on?
• Could I repeat their work? Is all the information present in order to repeat it?

Finally: Read the Results and Analysis.  Now read the details of this research. What did the researchers learn? If graphs and statistics are confusing, focus on the explanations around them. Questions to consider: 

• What did the author find and how did they find it?
• Are the results presented in a factual and unbiased way?
• Does their analysis agree with the data presented?
• Is all the data present?
• What conclusions do you formulate from this data? (And does it match with the Author's conclusions?)

Review the References (anytime): These give credit to other scientists and researchers and show you the basis the authors used to develop their research.  The list of references, or works cited, should include all of the materials the authors used in the article. The references list can be a good way to identify additional sources of information on the topic. Questions to ask:

• What other articles should I read?
• What other authors are respected in this field?
• What other research should I explore?

When you read these scholarly articles, remember that you will be writing based on what you read.

While you are Reading:

• Keep in mind your research question
• Focus on the information in the article relevant to your question (feel free to skim over other parts)
• Question everything you read - not everything is 100% true or performed effectively
• Think critically about what you read and seek to build your own arguments
• Read out of order! This isn't a mystery novel or movie, you want to start with the spoiler
• Use any keywords printed by the journals as further clues about the article
• Look up words you don't know

How to Take Notes on the Article

Try different ways, but use the one that fits you best. Below are some suggestions:

• Print the article and highlight, circle and otherwise mark while you read (for a PDF, you can use the highlight text  feature in Adobe Reader)
• Take notes on the sections, for example in the margins (Adobe Reader offers pop-up  sticky notes )
• Highlight only very important quotes or terms - or highlight potential quotes in a different color
• Summarize the main or key points

Reflect on what you have read - draw your own conclusions . As you read jot down questions that come to mind. These may be answered later on in the article or you may have found something that the authors did not consider. Here are a few questions that might be helpful:

• Have I taken time to understand all the terminology?
• Am I spending too much time on the less important parts of this article?
• Do I have any reason to question the credibility of this research?
• What specific problem does the research address and why is it important?
• How do these results relate to my research interests or to other works which I have read?
• Anatomy of a Scholarly Article (Interactive tutorial) Andreas Orphanides, North Carolina State University Libraries, 2009
• How to Read an Article in a Scholarly Journal (Research Guide) Cayuga Community College Library, 2016
• How To Read a Scholarly Journal Article (YouTube Video) Tim Lockman, Kishwaukee College Library, 2012.
• How To Read a Scientific Paper (Interactive tutorial) Michael Fosmire, Purdue University Libraries, 2013. PDF
• How to Read a Scientific Paper (Online article) Science Buddies, 2012
• How to Read a Scientific Research Paper (Article) Durbin Jr., C. G. Respiratory Care, 2009
• The Illusion of Certainty and the Certainty of Illusion: A Caution when Reading Scientific Articles (Article) T. A. Lang, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2011,
• Infographic: How to Read Scientific Papers Natalia Rodriguez, Elsevier, 2015
• Library Research Methods: Read & Evaluate Culinary Institute of America Library, 2016
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• Next: Impact Factors and Citation Counts >>
• Last Updated: Mar 8, 2024 1:17 PM
• URL: https://libguides.usc.edu/evaluate

How To Skim Read Journal Articles

Fast-Track Your Literature Review By Focusing On Three Sections

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | May 2020

If you’ve just started your literature review process, you’re probably sitting on a pile of scientific journal articles and research papers that are (1) lengthy and (2) written in very dense , academic language that is difficult to digest (at the best of times). It’s intimidating, for sure – and you’re probably wondering how on earth you’re going to get through it all.

You might be asking yourself some of these questions:

• Do I need to read every journal article to make sure I cover everything?
• Do I need to read every section of each article to understand it?
• If not, which sections should I focus on?

First things first, relax (I can feel your tension!). In this post, I’m going answer these questions and explain how to approach your review of the literature the smart way , so that you focus only on the most relevant literature and don’t waste time on low-value activities.

So, grab a nice hot cup of coffee (or tea, or whatever – just no beers) and let’s take a look at those questions, one at a time.

Question 1:

Do i need to read every journal article on my topic when doing my literature review.

The good news is that you don’t need to read every single journal article on your topic. Doing so would just be a waste of your time, as you’re generally looking to understand the current state of the literature – not the full history of it.

But… and this is an important but. You do need to read quite a bit to make sure that you have a comprehensive view of the current state of the literature (and of knowledge) in your area of research.

Quality trumps quantity when it comes to reviewing the literature. In other words, you need to focus on reading the journal articles that are most cited (i.e. that other academics have referenced) in relation to your topic keyword(s). You should focus on articles that are recent, relevant and well cited .

But how do I know if an article is well cited?

Thankfully, you can check the number of citations for any article really easily using Google Scholar . Just enter the article title in Google Scholar and it will show you how many citations it has – here’s an example:

In fact, Google Scholar is a great way to find the key journal articles for any keyword (topic) in general, so chances are you’ll be using this to find your journal articles in the first place. Therefore, be sure to keep an eye on citation count while you’re sourcing articles. It would also be smart to dedicate a column to it in your literature review catalogue (you can download one for free here ) so that you can quickly filter and sort by citation count.

A quick caveat – citation count is not a perfect metric for the quality of a journal article (unfortunately there is no unicorn metric that indicates quality). While its usually a good indicator of how popular an article is, it doesn’t mean the findings of the article are perfect (remember, the Kardashians are popular too – enough said). To the contrary, it could indicate that there’s a lot of controversy regarding the findings (sounds like the Kardashians again).

So, long story short – don’t be conned by citation count alone. Be sure to also pay attention the to quality of the journal each article is published in (you can check journal rank here ), and pay attention to what other articles say about any given popular article.

Need a helping hand?

Question 2:

Do i need to read the full journal journal article when doing my literature review.

Some more good news – no, you don’t need to read every single word in each journal article you review as part of your literature review. When you’re just starting your literature review, you need to get a big picture view of what each journal article is saying (in other words, the key questions and findings). Generally you can get a good feel for this by reading a few key sections in each article (we’ll get to these next).

That said (ah, there had to be a catch, right?), as you refine your literature review and establish more of a focus, you’ll need to dive deeper into the most important articles. Some articles will be central to your research – but you probably still don’t need to read them from first page to the last.

Question 3:

Which sections of each journal article should i read.

To get a big-picture view of what any article is all about, there are three sections that are very useful. These three sections generally explain both what the article is about (i.e. what questions they were trying to answer) and what the findings were (i.e. what their answers were). This is exactly what you’re looking for, so these three sections provide a great way for you to save time during your literature review.

So, let’s take a look at the three sections:

1 – The abstract (or executive summary)

The abstract (which is located right up front) provides a high-level overview of what the article is about. This is giving you the first little taste of the soup , so to speak. Generally, it will discuss what the research objectives were was and why they were important. This will give you a clear indication of how relevant the article is to your specific research, so pay close attention.

Sometimes the abstract will also discuss the findings of the article (much like a thesis abstract ), but this is not always the case (yeah, the abstract can be such a tease sometimes). If it does, it’s a bonus. But even so, you should still read the other sections, as the abstract only provides a very high-level view, and can miss out on specific nuances of the research.

2 – The introduction section

The introduction section will go into more detail about the topic being investigated and why this is important for the field of research. This will help you understand a bit more detail about what exactly they were investigating and in what context . Context is really important, so pay close attention to that.

For example, they might be investigating your exact topic, but in a country other than your own, or a different industry. In that case, you’d know that you need to pay very close attention to exactly how they undertook their research.

So, make sure you pay close attention to the introduction chapter to fully understand the focus of the research and the context in which it took place . Both will be important when it comes to writing your literature review, as you’ll need to use this information to build your arguments.

3 – The conclusion

While the introduction section tells you what the high-level questions the researchers asked, the conclusion section tells you what answers they found . This provides you with something of a shortcut to grasping the gist of the article, without reading all the dull and dry detail – yeah, it’s a little cheeky, I know. Of course, the conclusion is not going to highlight every nuance of the analysis findings, so if the article is highly relevant to your research, you should make sure to also pay close attention to the analysis findings section.

In addition to the findings of the research, the conclusion section will generally also highlight areas that require further research . In other words, they’ll outline areas that genuinely require further academic investigation (aka research gaps ). This is a gold mine for refining your topic into something highly original and well-rooted in the existing literature – just make sure that the article is recent, or someone else may have already exploited the research gap. If you’re still looking to identify a research topic, be sure to check out our video covering that here .

By reviewing these three sections of each article, you’ll save yourself a lot of time, while still getting a good understanding of what each article is saying. Keep in mind that as your literature review progresses, you focus will narrow and you’ll develop a set of core highly relevant articles, which you should sink your teeth into more deeply.

Let’s Recap

In this post, we looked at how to read academic journal articles quickly and efficiently, to save you many hours of pain while undertaking your literature review.

The key takeaways to remember are:

• You don’t need to read every single journal article covering your topic – focus on the most popular, authoritative and recent ones
• You don’t need to read every word of every article. To start, you just need to get a high-level understanding of the literature, which you can get by focusing on three key areas in each journal article.
• The three sections of each journal article to review are the abstract , the introduction and the conclusion .
• Once you’ve narrowed down your focus and have a core set of highly relevant, highly authoritative articles, you can dive deeper into them, paying closer attention to the methodology and analysis findings.

And there you have it – now go on and hammer through that pile of articles at warp speed. While you’re at it, why not also check out our other posts and videos covering research topic ideation , dissertation and thesis proposal , literature review , methodology , analysis and more.

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling short course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

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28 Comments

Thanks Derek for the tips

Reviewing the Literature can be overwhelming if you do not have the plan or the right structure to navigate the pool of information

You’re most welcome, Aletta. All the best with your literature review.

I personally have found these tips as a key to my long standing problem of reading articles. Thanks a million times

Simple and easy to read guidance… funny too

Great to hear that, Rishen 🙂

Much appreciated Derek. I already realized I could not read everything, but you confirming that has brought a lot of relief.

Great to hear that, Mazwakhe 🙂

Derek sir, I’m really happy for you.You made me to think very smart and effective way to do the review of literature.

Thank you so much.

Dear Derek, thank you for your easy and straight forward guidance,

Thanks for the interesting and informative article

You’re most welcome, Sanoon. Glad it was useful.

Thanks for the insights, I am about to start my literature review and this article as well as the other material from GradCoach will help me on the jorney.

You’re most welcome! Good luck writing your literature review

It was a great and effective information.

Thank you that was very helpful. I am taking a directed studies summer course, and I have to submit a literature review by end of August. That article was short, straight to the point and interesting 🙂 thank you Derek

You’re welcome, Emy 🙂 Good luck with your studies!

Thanks Derek. Reading this article has given me a boost because I have been so stock on how to go about my literature review.Though I know I am not meant to read the whole article.But your explanation has given me a greater insight.

Thank you very much sir for your great explanation 😄 Hopefully I’ve enough diligence and courage to start

You’re most welcome, Felicia. Good luck with your research.

thanks, it was helpful.

Thanks Derek for doing such a wonderful job of helping. Blessings Bro!

Concise and applicable, nice! what a great help. I am now doing a literature review section on my thesis, I used to waste so much time on reading articles that is not relevant back and forth.

Thank for your great help!

Hi Derek, i am busy with my research literature. I submited my 1st draft but it was way irrelevant as per comments made by my supervisor… i gave myself time to find out where i diverted until i lesson to some of your videos. As we speak now, i am starting following the guidelines and i feel confident that i am on the right track now. Thanks a lot my brother

You’re most welcome 🙂

I can’t explain my mood when I realised I had to study more than 40 articles about my study field. It was indeed a game-changer. Thank you very much, Derek. Also, Kardashian was the best example that can be used for this situation :)))

Thank you for posting this. It truly takes a load off! I’m new to Doctoral research and peer review study and “Overwhelmed” doesn’t quite sum up how I felt. This is a tremendous help!

Thank you for the advice. Question, how do one keep count of all the articles considered from starting point to narrowed down. Manually, or is there another way?

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• Research Guides

BSCI 1510L Literature and Stats Guide: 3.2 Components of a scientific paper

• 1 What is a scientific paper?
• 2 Referencing and accessing papers
• 2.1 Literature Cited
• 2.2 Accessing Scientific Papers
• 2.3 Traversing the web of citations
• 2.4 Keyword Searches
• 3 Style of scientific writing
• 3.1 Specific details regarding scientific writing

3.2 Components of a scientific paper

• 4 Summary of the Writing Guide and Further Information
• Appendix A: Calculation Final Concentrations
• 1 Formulas in Excel
• 2 Basic operations in Excel
• 3 Measurement and Variation
• 3.1 Describing Quantities and Their Variation
• 3.2 Samples Versus Populations
• 3.3 Calculating Descriptive Statistics using Excel
• 4 Variation and differences
• 5 Differences in Experimental Science
• 5.1 Aside: Commuting to Nashville
• 5.2 P and Detecting Differences in Variable Quantities
• 5.3 Statistical significance
• 5.4 A test for differences of sample means: 95% Confidence Intervals
• 5.5 Error bars in figures
• 5.6 Discussing statistics in your scientific writing
• 6 Scatter plot, trendline, and linear regression
• 7 The t-test of Means
• 8 Paired t-test
• 9 Two-Tailed and One-Tailed Tests
• 10 Variation on t-tests: ANOVA
• 11 Reporting the Results of a Statistical Test
• 12 Summary of statistical tests
• 1 Objectives
• 2 Project timeline
• 3 Background
• 4 Previous work in the BSCI 111 class
• 5 General notes about the project
• 6 About the paper
• 7 References

Nearly all journal articles are divided into the following major sections: abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and references or literature cited.   Usually the sections are labeled as such, although often the introduction (and sometimes the abstract) is not labeled.  Sometimes alternative section titles are used.  The abstract is sometimes called the "summary", the methods are sometimes called "materials and methods", and the discussion is sometimes called "conclusions".   Some journals also include the minor sections of "key words" following the abstract, and "acknowledgments" following the discussion.  In some journals, the sections may be divided into subsections that are given descriptive titles.  However, the general division into the six major sections is nearly universal.

3.2.1 Abstract

The abstract is a short summary (150-200 words or less) of the important points of the paper.  It does not generally include background information.  There may be a very brief statement of the rationale for conducting the study.  It describes what was done, but without details.  It also describes the results in a summarized way that usually includes whether or not the statistical tests were significant.  It usually concludes with a brief statement of the importance of the results.  Abstracts do not include references.  When writing a paper, the abstract is always the last part to be written.

The purpose of the abstract is to allow potential readers of a paper to find out the important points of the paper without having to actually read the paper.  It should be a self-contained unit capable of being understood without the benefit of the text of the article . It essentially serves as an "advertisement" for the paper that readers use to determine whether or not they actually want to wade through the entire paper or not.  Abstracts are generally freely available in electronic form and are often presented in the results of an electronic search.  If searchers do not have electronic access to the journal in which the article is published, the abstract is the only means that they have to decide whether to go through the effort (going to the library to look up the paper journal, requesting a reprint from the author, buying a copy of the article from a service, requesting the article by Interlibrary Loan) of acquiring the article.  Therefore it is important that the abstract accurately and succinctly presents the most important information in the article.

3.2.2 Introduction

The introduction section of a paper provides the background information necessary to understand why the described experiment was conducted.  The introduction should describe previous research on the topic that has led to the unanswered questions being addressed by the experiment and should cite important previous papers that form the background for the experiment.  The introduction should also state in an organized fashion the goals of the research, i.e. the particular, specific questions that will be tested in the experiments.  There should be a one-to-one correspondence between questions raised in the introduction and points discussed in the conclusion section of the paper.  In other words, do not raise questions in the introduction unless you are going to have some kind of answer to the question that you intend to discuss at the end of the paper. 

You may have been told that every paper must have a hypothesis that can be clearly stated.  That is often true, but not always.  If your experiment involves a manipulation which tests a specific hypothesis, then you should clearly state that hypothesis.  On the other hand, if your experiment was primarily exploratory, descriptive, or measurative, then you probably did not have an  a priori  hypothesis, so don't pretend that you did and make one up.  (See the discussion in the introduction to Experiment 5 for more on this.)  If you state a hypothesis in the introduction, it should be a general hypothesis and not a null or alternative hypothesis for a statistical test.  If it is necessary to explain how a statistical test will help you evaluate your general hypothesis, explain that in the methods section. 

A good introduction should be fairly heavy with citations.  This indicates to the reader that the authors are informed about previous work on the topic and are not working in a vacuum.  Citations also provide jumping-off points to allow the reader to explore other tangents to the subject that are not directly addressed in the paper.  If the paper supports or refutes previous work, readers can look up the citations and make a comparison for themselves. 

"Do not get lost in reviewing background information. Remember that the Introduction is meant to introduce the reader to your research, not summarize and evaluate all past literature on the subject (which is the purpose of a review paper). Many of the other studies you may be tempted to discuss in your Introduction are better saved for the Discussion, where they become a powerful tool for comparing and interpreting your results. Include only enough background information to allow your reader to understand why you are asking the questions you are and why your hypotheses are reasonable ones. Often, a brief explanation of the theory involved is sufficient.

Write this section in the past or present tense, never in the future. " (Steingraber et al. 1985)

In other words, the introduction section relates what the topic being investigated is, why it is important, what research (if any) has been done prior that is relevant to what you are trying to do, and in what ways you will be looking into this topic.

An example to think about:

This is an example of a student-derived introduction.  Read the paragraph and before you go beyond, think about the paragraph first.

"Hand-washing is one of the most effective and simplest of ways to reduce infection and disease, and thereby causing less death.  When examining the effects of soap on hands, it was the work of Sickbert-Bennett and colleagues (2005) that showed that using soap or an alcohol on the hands during hand-washing was a significant effect in removing bacteria from the human hand.  Based on the work of this, the team led by Larsen (1991) then showed that the use of computer imaging could be a more effective way to compare the amount of bacteria on a hand."

There are several aspects within this "introduction" that could use improvement.  A group of any random 4 of you could easily come up with at 10 different things to reword, revise, expand upon.

In specific, there should be one thing addressed that more than likely you did not catch when you were reading it.

The citations: Not the format, but the logical use of them.

Look again. "...the work of Sickbert-Bennett...(2005)" and then "Based on the work of this, the team led by Larsen (1991)..."

How can someone in 1991 use or base their work on something from 2005?

They cannot.  You can spend an entire hour using spellcheck and reading through and through again to find all the little things to "give it more oomph", but at the core, you still must present a clear and concise and logical thought-process.

3.2.3 Methods (taken mostly verbatim from Steingraber et al. 1985, until the version A, B,C portion)

The function of the methods section is to describe all experimental procedures, including controls.  The description should be complete enough to enable someone else to repeat your work.  If there is more than one part to the experiment, it is a good idea to describe your methods and present your results in the same order in each section. This may not be the same order in which the experiments were performed -it is up to you to decide what order of presentation will make the most sense to your reader.

1.  Explain why each procedure was done, i.e., what variable were you measuring and why? Example:

Difficult to understand :  First, I removed the frog muscle and then I poured Ringer’s solution on it. Next, I attached it to the kymograph.

Improved:   I removed the frog muscle and poured Ringer’s solution on it to prevent it from drying out. I then attached the muscle to the kymograph in order to determine the minimum voltage required for contraction.

Better:   Frog muscle was excised between attachment points to the bone. Ringer's solution was added to the excised section to prevent drying out. The muscle was attached to the kymograph in order to determine the minimum voltage required for contraction.

2.  Experimental procedures and results are narrated in the past tense (what you did, what you found, etc.) whereas conclusions from your results are given in the present tense.

3.  Mathematical equations and statistical tests are considered mathematical methods and should be described in this section along with the actual experimental work. (Show a sample calculation, state the type of test(s) performed and program used)

4.  Use active rather than passive voice when possible.  [Note: see Section 3.1.4 for more about this.]  Always use the singular "I" rather than the plural "we" when you are the only author of the paper (Methods section only).  Throughout the paper, avoid contractions, e.g. did not vs. didn’t.

5.  If any of your methods is fully described in a previous publication (yours or someone else’s), you can cite work that instead of describing the procedure again.

Example:  The chromosomes were counted at meiosis in the anthers with the standard acetocarmine technique of Snow (1955).

Below is a PARTIAL and incomplete version of a "method".  Without getting into the details of why, Version A and B are bad.  A is missing too many details and B is giving some extra details but not giving some important ones, such as the volumes used.  Version C is still not complete, but it is at least a viable method. Notice that C is also not the longest....it is possible to be detailed without being long-winded.

In other words, the methods section is what you did in the experiment and has enough details that someone else can repeat your experiment.  If the methods section has excluded one or more important detail(s) such that the reader of the method does not know what happened, it is a 'poor' methods section.  Similarly, by giving out too many useless details a methods section can be 'poor'.

You may have multiple sub-sections within your methods (i.e., a section for media preparation, a section for where the chemicals came from, a section for the basic physical process that occurred, etc.,).  A methods section is  NEVER  a list of numbered steps.

3.2.4 Results (with excerpts from Steingraber et al. 1985)

The function of this section is to summarize general trends in the data without comment, bias, or interpretation. The results of statistical tests applied to your data are reported in this section although conclusions about your original hypotheses are saved for the Discussion section. In other words, you state "the P-value" in Results and whether below/above 0.05 and thus significant/not significant while in the Discussion you restate the P-value and then formally state what that means beyond "significant/not significant".

Tables and figures  should be used  when they are a more efficient way to convey information than verbal description. They must be independent units, accompanied by explanatory captions that allow them to be understood by someone who has not read the text. Do not repeat in the text the information in tables and figures, but do cite them, with a summary statement when that is appropriate.  Example:

Incorrect:   The results are given in Figure 1.

Correct:   Temperature was directly proportional to metabolic rate (Fig. 1).

Please note that the entire word "Figure" is almost never written in an article.  It is nearly always abbreviated as "Fig." and capitalized.  Tables are cited in the same way, although Table is not abbreviated.

Whenever possible, use a figure instead of a table. Relationships between numbers are more readily grasped when they are presented graphically rather than as columns in a table.

Data may be presented in figures and tables, but this may not substitute for a verbal summary of the findings. The text should be  understandable  by someone who has not seen your figures and tables.

1.  All results should be presented, including those that do not support the hypothesis.

2.  Statements made in the text must be supported by the results contained in figures and tables.

3.  The results of statistical tests can be presented in parentheses following a verbal description.

Example: Fruit size was significantly greater in trees growing alone (t = 3.65, df = 2, p < 0.05).

Simple results of statistical tests may be reported in the text as shown in the preceding example.  The results of multiple tests may be reported in a table if that increases clarity. (See Section 11 of the Statistics Manual for more details about reporting the results of statistical tests.)  It is not necessary to provide a citation for a simple t-test of means, paired t-test, or linear regression.  If you use other more complex (or less well-known) tests, you should cite the text or reference you followed to do the test.  In your materials and methods section, you should report how you did the test (e.g. using the statistical analysis package of Excel). 

It is NEVER appropriate to simply paste the results from statistical software into the results section of your paper.   The output generally reports more information than is required and it is not in an appropriate format for a paper. Similar, do NOT place a screenshot.  

Should you include every data point or not in the paper?  Prior to 2010 or so, most papers would probably not present the actual raw data collected, but rather show the "descriptive statistics" about their data (mean, SD, SE, CI, etc.). Often, people could simply contact the author(s) for the data and go from there.  As many journals have a significant on-line footprint now, it has become increasingly more common that the entire data could be included in the paper.  And realize why the entire raw data may not have been included in a publication. Prior to about 2010, your publication had limited  paper space  to be seen on.  If you have a sample of size of 10 or 50, you probably could show the entire data set easily in one table/figure and it not take up too much printed space. If your sample size was 500 or 5,000 or more, the size of the data alone would take pages of printed text.  Given how much the Internet and on-line publications have improved/increased in storage space, often now there will be either an embedded file to access or the author(s) will place the file on-line somewhere with an address link, such as GitHub.  Videos of the experiment are also shown as well now.

3.2.4.1 Tables

• Do not repeat information in a table that you are depicting in a graph or histogram; include a table only if it presents new information.
• It is easier to compare numbers by reading down a column rather than across a row. Therefore, list sets of data you want your reader to compare in vertical form.
• Provide each table with a number (Table 1, Table 2, etc.) and a title. The numbered title is placed above the table .
• Please see Section 11 of the Excel Reference and Statistics Manual for further information on reporting the results of statistical tests.

3.2.4.2. Figures

• These comprise graphs, histograms, and illustrations, both drawings and photographs. Provide each figure with a number (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc.) and a caption (or "legend") that explains what the figure shows. The numbered caption is placed below the figure .  Figure legend = Figure caption.
• Figures submitted for publication must be "photo ready," i.e., they will appear just as you submit them, or photographically reduced. Therefore, when you graduate from student papers to publishable manuscripts, you must learn to prepare figures that will not embarrass you. At the present time, virtually all journals require manuscripts to be submitted electronically and it is generally assumed that all graphs and maps will be created using software rather than being created by hand.  Nearly all journals have specific guidelines for the file types, resolution, and physical widths required for figures.  Only in a few cases (e.g. sketched diagrams) would figures still be created by hand using ink and those figures would be scanned and labeled using graphics software.  Proportions must be the same as those of the page in the journal to which the paper will be submitted. 
• Graphs and Histograms: Both can be used to compare two variables. However, graphs show continuous change, whereas histograms show discrete variables only.  You can compare groups of data by plotting two or even three lines on one graph, but avoid cluttered graphs that are hard to read, and do not plot unrelated trends on the same graph. For both graphs, and histograms, plot the independent variable on the horizontal (x) axis and the dependent variable on the vertical (y) axis. Label both axes, including units of measurement except in the few cases where variables are unitless, such as absorbance.
• Drawings and Photographs: These are used to illustrate organisms, experimental apparatus, models of structures, cellular and subcellular structure, and results of procedures like electrophoresis. Preparing such figures well is a lot of work and can be very expensive, so each figure must add enough to justify its preparation and publication, but good figures can greatly enhance a professional article, as your reading in biological journals has already shown.

3.2.5 Discussion (modified; taken from Steingraber et al. 1985)

The function of this section is to analyze the data and relate them to other studies. To "analyze" means to evaluate the meaning of your results in terms of the original question or hypothesis and point out their biological significance.

1. The Discussion should contain at least:

• the relationship between the results and the original hypothesis, i.e., whether they support the hypothesis, or cause it to be rejected or modified
• an integration of your results with those of previous studies in order to arrive at explanations for the observed phenomena
• possible explanations for unexpected results and observations, phrased as hypotheses that can be tested by realistic experimental procedures, which you should describe

2. Trends that are not statistically significant can still be discussed if they are suggestive or interesting, but cannot be made the basis for conclusions as if they were significant.

3. Avoid redundancy between the Results and the Discussion section. Do not repeat detailed descriptions of the data and results in the Discussion. In some journals, Results and Discussions are joined in a single section, in order to permit a single integrated treatment with minimal repetition. This is more appropriate for short, simple articles than for longer, more complicated ones.

4.  End the Discussion with a summary of the principal points you want the reader to remember. This is also the appropriate place to propose specific further study if that will serve some purpose,  but do not end with the tired cliché  that "this problem needs more study." All problems in biology need more study. Do not close on what you wish you had done, rather finish stating your conclusions and contributions.

5.  Conclusion section.  Primarily dependent upon the complexity and depth of an experiment, there may be a formal conclusion section after the discussion section. In general, the last line or so of the discussion section should be a more or less summary statement of the overall finding of the experiment.  IF the experiment was large enough/complex enough/multiple findings uncovered, a distinct paragraph (or two) may be needed to help clarify the findings.  Again, only if the experiment scale/findings warrant a separate conclusion section.

3.2.6 Title

The title of the paper should be the last thing that you write.  That is because it should distill the essence of the paper even more than the abstract (the next to last thing that you write). 

The title should contain three elements:

1. the name of the organism studied;

2. the particular aspect or system studied;

3. the variable(s) manipulated.

Do not be afraid to be grammatically creative. Here are some variations on a theme, all suitable as titles:

THE EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE ON GERMINATION OF ZEA MAYS

DOES TEMPERATURE AFFECT GERMINATION OF ZEA MAYS?

TEMPERATURE AND ZEA MAYS GERMINATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURE

Sometimes it is possible to include the principal result or conclusion in the title:

HIGH TEMPERATURES REDUCE GERMINATION OF ZEA MAYS

Note for the BSCI 1510L class: to make your paper look more like a real paper, you can list all of the other group members as co-authors.  However, if you do that, you should list you name first so that we know that you wrote it.

3.2.7 Literature Cited

Please refer to section 2.1 of this guide.

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• Next: 4 Summary of the Writing Guide and Further Information >>
• Last Updated: Jun 21, 2024 9:40 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/bsci1510L

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• Knowledge Base

Methodology

• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

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A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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What Exactly Is the Science of Reading?

• Posted June 25, 2024
• By Elizabeth M. Ross
• Language and Literacy Development

Last summer Nonie Lesaux , a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who leads a research program that seeks to improve literacy outcomes for children and youth, was approached with a problem. The New York State Education Department (NYSED) needed to help the 600-plus school districts that the state agency serves better understand what scientific research had to say about how children learn strong reading and writing skills. Their query came at a time when powerful public advocacy for bringing the science of reading to classrooms, which had been steadily gaining momentum, had reached a fever pitch.

Over roughly the past decade, 38 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or introduced policies that aim to bring literacy instruction in line with decades of interdisciplinary research on the science of reading. In New York, in fact, Governor Kathy Hochul introduced a plan earlier this year to have schools in the state adopt science-based methods to improve reading instruction by September 2025.

When they approached her last summer, administrators at NYSED told Lesaux that many school district leaders and educators across the state felt “angst, confusion, and worry about the science of reading.” They weren’t sure what the term meant exactly — they had lots of questions, and they needed clarity and resources, she says, to help them “cut through a lot of noise,” including some misconceptions. 

So Lesaux produced a series of seven briefs to help the educators better understand the research, as well as the work that is needed. The briefs explore key ideas and myths about the science of reading, and leadership strategies for those in New York’s preK–12 systems who are working to improve literacy and provide professional learning supports.

Lesaux recently discussed the briefs, as well as how they have been received.

You worked with NYSED on a series of literacy briefs back in 2017. How did you build on that previous work with this new set of briefs?

Literacy is still the multifaceted, complex construct that it always has been, and the demands on the learner and the citizen today, in this global knowledge-based economy, are significant. You have to develop literacy skills to a level that is much higher than might have been necessary even 25 years ago, for entry into the workforce and for a good wage and income and lifestyle — that hasn't changed. … There is some overlap [in the briefs] because the knowledge base didn't change much. I think what changed, which was super important for the field, is the public became much clearer that there are effective and ineffective ways to teach early word reading.

In your first brief, you say that the science of reading reflects more than 50 years of research across multiple disciplines about how children successfully learn to read and write. If there is so much research and evidence, why has there been so much confusion about effective literacy instruction?

I think what has created some of the confusion is that there are a couple curricula and approaches that took hold at large scale — this kind of “leveled reader” approach, “balanced literacy” —  and the field took that up and the research was not there. In fact, it's deleterious for some kids because it's not the right approach. It's true that phonics instruction should be very explicit and direct, and that is not the same as teaching language and comprehension. And we need the language and comprehension teaching, but we can't confuse the two. And I think for far too long there was sort of this text-based approach to teaching phonics that wasn't actually the explicit direct instruction that a very significant number of children both need and respond so well to. But I think the danger is that we then swing the pendulum and pit the two ideas against each other, ideologically, and create this thing called “the reading wars,” when in fact we know we need a strong plan for phonics, and we need a strong plan for language and comprehension. It sounds so basic, and yet the politics and some of the ideologies of what it feels like to educate in developmentally appropriate ways got in the way of all of this. You know, rote explicit phonics instruction only needs to be about 20 minutes a day, but if you overdo it and it becomes synonymous with your reading instruction, you don't have a very engaging academic environment. When you do it really well and in the short burst that every first and second grader needs, it becomes very reinforcing and exciting because kids see their growth.

In one of your briefs, you set out to debunk common myths about the science of reading and you point out that learning to read and reading to learn should not be two distinct stages. You say effective teaching aims to teach all skills simultaneously from the earliest years?

Yeah, we need to stop pitting the two and we need to do both really well…. [and be] honest about the fact that there are lots of kids who don't have a vulnerability in the phonics area and don’t need more than the standard foundational instruction in this area, but who have very underdeveloped vocabulary and comprehension skills, you know, à la achievement opportunity gaps, and need a lot of content building knowledge. So, if we turn around and only do structured rote phonics programs, ad nauseum, they’re no better off for the long run.

What you mentioned about building up students’ background knowledge, to assist with reading comprehension, makes me think about the work of HGSE’s Jimmy Kim , correct?

Definitely. Jimmy’s portfolio of research has shed light on the effective strategies and the complexity of building up knowledge and comprehension skills. The same is true for Meredith Rowe's vocabulary work . There are others at HGSE, like Nadine Gaab with her [dyslexia] screening work , whose research is equally important. We’re all in the same fight together, contributing in specific ways for the same outcomes, but we're all looking at different pieces.

Regardless of which pieces we’re each focused on, some of the feedback that I get repeatedly [from school districts] is that it's so helpful that we step back and look at the policy and practice landscape and look at what the research really tells us about where we are, and then craft guidance in the form of resources and tools.

Additional resources

• American Public Radio's Sold a Story podcast

Separating Fact from Fiction About the Science of Reading

• The Science of Reading Literacy Briefs, NYSED
• Harvard Ed. magazine explores the next phase of the Reach Every Reader initiative
• Professor Catherine Snow puts the "literacy crisis" in context on the Harvard EdCast

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

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Reach Every Reader on its impact and the project’s next phase

New literacy briefs correct common myths and misconceptions 

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