Reading scholarly articles can feel intimidating, but you don’t have to read them from start to finish like a novel. By learning how to navigate the structure of an academic article, you can quickly figure out whether it’s relevant and how it supports your research.
Here are five strategies to help you work smarter, not harder:
These strategies will help you save time, reduce frustration, and build confidence as you become more comfortable working with scholarly materials.
Scholarly articles are published in scholarly or academic journals. While the content found in each journal is subject-specific, there are some similarities that these types of articles share.
Here is a shortened version of a real scholarly article adapted to identify the parts of an article. Using this sample, let’s look at some of the most common sections found in scholarly articles. Keep in mind that not every section in a scholarly article will have the same heading that's listed in this example. For example, the "Introduction" section might be labeled as "Background" instead.
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You can read the full-text article for this example using our databases or by clicking on the PDF file below. You will need to log in with your MEID and password.
This section is a derivative of "Parts of a Scholarly Article" by Kathy Essmiller, licensed under CC BY-NC.
Things to look for when evaluating scientific research, courtesy of the website Compound Interest.
