LibGuides: Reading in the Disciplines: Science

Approaching a Paper

Professor Pan explains how he reads an article.

How to read a journal article

Oftentimes, journal articles are written in a way that doesn’t make it very easy for the reader to follow. It can be easy to get lost in unfamiliar terms and abbreviations as well as bad organization. The only way to get better at reading articles is to read a lot of them. Here is how I read an article.

Carefully read the Abstract and Introduction. I do a lot of highlighting, underlining, and writing definitions all throughout the paper.
Read the results slowly, spending a lot of time looking at the figures and figure legends, and the text that refers to each figure. Hopefully, the text should follow the order of the figures (sometimes the authors skip around).
For each figure, make sure you understand what each part of the figure is showing. There may be lots of abbreviations or terms you are unfamiliar with. You’ll have to find their definitions in the text, Materials and Methods, prior references, or web resources (I use Wikipedia sometimes when reading articles since it saves time, but it isn’t always reliable).
For each figure, write down all the info needed to understand the figure. Also, write what the take home message of the figure is.
Supplemental figures add another level of complexity, especially since they have to be found separately. I usually focus on the figures in the paper first and the supplemental if there is time.
Read the Discussion. There tends to be more speculation in the Discussion, some of it should make more sense since you’ve carefully gone through the figures.
Re-reading the Abstract again also helps a lot here.
You should be able to summarize the main points of the article and describe how (through the experiments) they got to their conclusions.

How to read a scientific paper

How to read a scientific paper
"Nothing makes you feel stupid quite like reading a scientific journal article.

I remember my first experience with these ultra-congested and aggressively bland manuscripts so dense that scientists are sometimes caught eating them to stay regular. I was in college taking a seminar course in which we had to read and discuss a new paper each week. And something just wasn’t working for me.

Every week I would sit with the article, read every single sentence, and then discover that I hadn’t learned a single thing. I’d attend class armed with exactly one piece of knowledge: I knew I had read the paper. The instructor would ask a question; I’d have no idea what she was asking. She’d ask a simpler question—still no idea. But I’d read the damn paper!"

Science Magazine-How to Read a Journal article

How to (seriously) read a scientific paper
" Many of you have come to us asking for more (and more serious) advice on how to make sense of the scientific literature, so we’ve asked a dozen scientists at different career stages and in a broad range of fields to tell us how they do it. Although it is clear that reading scientific papers becomes easier with experience, the stumbling blocks are real, and it is up to each scientist to identify and apply the techniques that work best for them. The responses have been edited for clarity and brevity."

How to Read Like A Scientist- from Kenyon College

How Scientists Read
Reading a scientific paper can be a daunting task. The structure of scientific papers is very different than other forms of writing, and the content of scientific papers can be complex. In our first step towards becoming expert readers of the scientific literature, we will explore two questions:
How do expert readers approach a scientific paper?
What is the structure of the scientific paper?

Reading in the Sciences

Reading in the sciences can be very different than reading a basic text for information or reading for pleasure. Reading the scientific literature, especially for the new reader, is more challenging and time-consuming than reading other texts.

Reading scientific texts challenge the reader with new concepts, technical vocabulary, and new formats. Different scientific disciplines have different terminology

Approaching a journal article, first read the abstract. Make sure you take the time to understand what to expect in the article. If the abstract is too challenging or describes an article that sounds too challenging, it is likely this is not the best article for you.

Some questions to ask yourself when reading a paper include:

What are the functions of the investigation:

to explore
to examine previous results
to test a theory

How does the evidence presented contribute to the function of the investigation?

What data has been collected?

How has the data been analyzed?

What is the research design?

What are the logical links between data and findings?

How does this relate to previous findings and widely accepted theory?

What are potential sources of bias?

Where did the study funding come from?
Could the findings be influenced?

Reading in the Disciplines: Science

Advice from Professor Pan

Approaching a Paper

How to read a scientific paper

Science Magazine-How to Read a Journal article

How to Read Like A Scientist- from Kenyon College

Reading in the Sciences