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 in each journal is subject-specific, these articles share common features.
This is a shortened, real scholarly article adapted to highlight its parts.
Use it to explore the most common sections you’ll see in scholarly articles.
Section headings can vary (for example, an Introduction may appear as Background).
Tip: Click each of the orange plus signs to learn more about that section.
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.
