Research articles in the sciences and social sciences tend to be concise reports of results from quantitative and/or qualitative analysis. Focus on the discussion of results, methods, and limitations.
The infographic below describes the components of scholarly research articles in the Social and Physical Sciences. The majority of articles in these disciplines will have the sections listed below:
Reading scholarly articles is a skill that you can improve to become a critical and efficient reader. The process can be different depending on the discipline the article was written for.
1. Read the abstract
An abstract is a summary of the article, and will give you an idea of what the article is about and how it will be written. If there are lots of complicated subject-specific words in the abstract, the article will be just as hard to read.
2. Read the conclusion
This is where the author will repeat all of their ideas and their findings. Some authors even use this section to compare their study to others. By reading this, you will notice a few things you missed, and will get another overview of the content.
3. Read the first paragraph or the introduction
This is usually where the author will lay out their plan for the article and describe the steps they will take to talk about their topic. By reading this, you will know what parts of the article will be most relevant to your topic!
4. Read the first sentence of every paragraph
These are called topic sentences, and will usually introduce the idea for the paragraph that follows. By reading this, you can make sure that the paragraph has information relevant to your topic before you read the entire thing.
5. The rest of the article
Now that you have gathered the idea of the article through the abstract, conclusion, introduction, and topic sentences, you can read the rest of the article!
Scholarly "Conversation"An academic book or journal article is not an isolated, self-contained package of information. Rather, think of each academic text as one contribution to a scholarly conversation.
In most academic texts, the authors will provide you, the reader, with an outline of the conversation that's been going on so far. This is called the Literature Review.
A literature review presents and evaluates previous scholarship on a topic, identifies an unsolved problem or unanswered question in the field, and reveals how the authors plan to resolve this gap in our understanding. In the sciences and social sciences, these elements are often stated explicitly.
Some things to consider as you are researching: