Your instructors will often reinforce the importance of using scholarly articles rather than popular articles. Yet, these scholarly articles may appeal to an audience that is not the student audience. The following strategies can help you to feel more confident when reading peer-reviewed articles (that is, articles that have been taken through a process of being reviewed and commented on by fellow scholars before being published for a specifically academic/scholarly audience):

Skimming and scanning

Like a stone skipping on water, skimming and scanning involve moving quickly across the surface of a text, rather than diving into it.

Skimming, or reading quickly, can help you to see what the overall text may concern. However, scanning, the quest of looking for specific information, will allow you to look for key words, phrases, or content that might help you to decide which parts of an article will integrate well into your research writing assignments.

Use skimming strategies when you need to see if a scholarly article will work for a research paper that you may be writing. Use scanning strategies when you have been assigned to read a scholarly article for a discussion or when you are looking for specific information (data, years, etc.) that you need to develop a point.

Reading the Abstract

Scholarly articles start with abstracts, or summaries of the papers ahead. Abstracts can be valuable tools for beginning to read scholarly articles because they identify main points and major details that the article will review. However, they can also be dense and difficult to understand; if the abstract doesn’t make sense, begin with the introduction.

Questioning and Annotating

Annotations are a great way to interact with a text. If you own the book, go ahead and write in the margins. Otherwise, stick to sticky notes.

Once you have familiarized yourself with the paper through skimming, scanning, and reading the abstract, you can complete more detailed reading strategies like questioning and annotating.

It is important to start your reading with a question in mind. This question might be one that your instructor has posed in a discussion board, or it might be a research question that you are looking to answer for a written assignment. As you read through the scholarly article, keep this question handy. By looking for its answer, you can read in a more detailed and critical manner.

Sometimes, however, you might have questions pop up as you read. These questions may look for more information, such as wanting to know more, or they might look for clarification, especially when you do not understand the material quite yet. Writing down these questions can help you find the answers along the way. This type of questioning is essentially part of annotating.

Annotating, or taking notes, will also allow you to highlight key factors that you want to research further, underline important quotes that help you to understand the material, or point out material that is helpful to your research.

IMRaD Format

Many scientific or social-scientific essays follow an IMRaD format: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. An awareness of each piece and how it works can help you approach the essay efficiently and productively.

IMRAD format

• Introduction – Why was the study undertaken? What was the research question, the tested hypothesis or the purpose of the research?
  •  This section provides background information about the origin and purpose of performing the experiment or study. It reviews previous research and presents existing theories on the topic.
• Methods – When, where, and how was the study done? What materials were used or who was included in the study groups (patients, etc.)?
  • This section covers the methodologies used to investigate the research question, including the identification of participants, procedures, and materials as well as a description of the actual procedure. It should be sufficiently detailed to allow for replication.
• Results – What answer was found to the research question; what did the study find? Was the tested hypothesis true?
  • The results section presents key findings of the research, including reference to indicators of statistical significance.
• Discussion – What might the answer imply and why does it matter? How does it fit in with what other researchers have found? What are the perspectives for future research?
  • This section provides an interpretation of the findings, states their significance for current research, and derives implications for theory and practice. Alternative interpretations for findings are also provided, particularly when it is not possible to conclude for the directionality of the effects. In the discussion, authors also acknowledge the strengths and limitations/weaknesses of the study and offer concrete directions about for future research.

Reading the References

The strategies above all deal with the written material within scholarly articles, but the end material can be just as important. Scholarly articles reference other articles, and those references are listed in the article’s bibliography, endnotes, or in something called a “Reference List” or “Works Cited” page (among other terms). Researching and reading through some of the references is another valuable strategy for reading scholarly articles. Reviewing the references can lead to opportunities to further understand the topic and even find more sources to substantiate your own writing.

Click this link to visit an interactive lesson on the structure of scholarly articles. https://new.library.arizona.edu/tutorials/scholarly-article/#/