Ivy Tech Libraries: Research 101: Reading Scholarly Articles

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Anatomy of a Scholarly Article
Highlights common parts of scholarly articles and explains how to read them for understanding.

Scientific Articles
Humanities Articles

Here’s a visual representation of how a typical scientific, medical, or social scientific article is organized, and the order in which to read such an article. Here’s a step-by-step discussion of this process:

Start with the abstract. This italicized paragraph is like a miniature version of the article and will give you all the big highlights.
Most of these articles report the collection of some new data. From the abstract, try to figure out how the data was collected, and who or what were the study subjects.
- The most-used data collection methods are experiments, surveys (or questionnaires), interviews, focus groups, observations, and content analyses. Your study used one or two of these.
- Most scientific and social scientific studies study people, but study subjects also can be inanimate objects, like laser beams or news articles.
- Articles that have the term “meta analysis” in the title or abstract are studies of other studies. They aim to establish what the research consensus is on a topic, that is, what most experts agree is true about a topic.
After the abstract, look for hypotheses or research questions in the first couple of sections of the article. Hypotheses and research questions summarize the researchers’ goals in the study. They should give you a clear idea of the researchers’ focus. Look for “This article argues” or “This study aims to.”
Read the beginning of the discussion section, which usually is the last major section in the article. This section again should summarize what the study tried to accomplish, what its results were, and what are the implications of these results. You can skip any subsections that list limitations or future research suggestions.
If you want to plug into the larger conversation around the study’s topic, look through the citations listed in the literature review, or in other sections at the beginning of the article. This is where researchers establish what conversations their research fits into. Look for these citations at the back of the article in the references or works cited section.

To read an article or book in the humanities:

First, read the abstract, if there is one. This italicized paragraph contains the same loot as one in a scientific article.
Read the introduction and conclusion until you understand their main points.
Pay attention to any sentence that begins with something like “This article argues.” This is the author’s thesis statement or argument. Keep this in mind while dissecting the rest of the article and evaluating whether the author proved his or her argument.
If you see a portion of the paper where the author is describing previously published books or studies, this is the literature review. Skip this part for now.
Move onto the body of the paper, where the author is actually making their argument, not just stating it. Once you locate that, read this intensively until you have a good understanding of what the author is saying. Remember that this may not be labeled clearly as the discussion, so you may need to skim the article to figure it out.
Next, read the literature review to gain an understanding of the larger conversation the author is engaged in, and to identify possible sources to use in your own research.
Finally, you can read the whole thing from beginning to end. Having broken down the article beforehand, this should go pretty quickly. Keep an eye out for any parts of the argument that you have lingering questions about, and read these parts more closely.