Reading Scholarly Articles

For many college assignments, you will be asked to find and read scholarly articles to support arguments in your own writing. Scholarly articles are those written by professionals in their fields of study, intended for other professionals in that field, and published in a venue that professionals in the field use. Professional articles are also often peer-reviewed articles, meaning that other scholars have reviewed the article before publication.

Journal articles generally share these common characteristics:

• Publishes quarterly or semi-annually in print journals or online.
• Follows strict guidelines for organization, writing, and citations.
• Includes information organized into sections with headings.
• Contains long and in-depth analysis; 10-20 pages is normal.
• Includes graphs or tables but few, if any, images or advertisements.
• Includes specialized or field-specific language.
• Aims to present information objectively, without bias.
• Includes reference lists and in-text citations.

Scholarly journal articles are different than conventional articles from newspapers, magazines, and websites. They often can be very challenging to read.

MLA and CMS

Journal articles written in MLA (Modern Language Association) or CMS (Chicago Manual of Style) are generally organized like an essay, with or without headings, and have the following sections:

• Introduction
• Body
• Conclusion
• Bibliography or Works Cited
• Appendices (if necessary)

These articles use MLA or CMS citation style for layout, citation, and documentation. They make and support arguments, they pay close attention to good prose and writing style, and they include cited references. These types of articles are used in English, History, Modern Languages, and Philosophy studies.

APA Style

APA Style is more commonly used in the sciences and research articles written in the fields of Education, Medicine, Natural Sciences, or Social Sciences. They focus less on prose and writing style, and more on using precise language and specialized terminology. They present studies, propose and test hypotheses, cite relevant research, and describe the results of an experiment. They are generally organized as follows:

• Abstract: Summarize the article
• Key Words
• Introduction
  • Describe the topic
  • Identify the problem
  • Provide a literature review
  • Define the theoretical approach
  • State the hypothesis
• Method
  • Describe the model used
  • Describe what was done
• Results
  • Share data (often with tables and
    figures)
  • Describe results
• Discussion (and/or Conclusion)
  • Interpret the results
  • Draw conclusions
  • Identify limitations
  • Share ideas for future areas of study
• References
• Appendices (if necessary)
• Table and/or figures (if necessary, may also be included in the body of the article)

Journal articles follow different rules based on the subject or discipline they address. Those written for the humanities use MLA and CMS style and are structured like an essay, while other journal articles follow APA guidelines for organization, writing, and citation.