Reading scholarly articles is challenging. Follow these tips as you peruse your articles.
Start by examining the structure and format of the article. Most scholarly, peer-reviewed articles have the same or similar structure. Many contain data and findings.
- Abstract (summary of the whole article
- Introduction (why they did the research)
- Methodology (how they did the research)
- Results (what happened; identify the findings)
- Discussion (what the results mean)
- Conclusion (what they learned)
- References (whose research they read)
- Read the abstract and conclusion first, as these have the main points.
- Read the discussion next. This will give you a longer report on the findings and their implications.
- At this point, if you're sure the article has what you need, start at the beginning and read the whole thing through, taking notes as you go.
