Top 8 best benefits of reading Articles
Reading a scientific paper is not the same as reading novels or news, where you start from the beginning and read line by line up to the end. You should read the research articles strategically and with a critical mindset. Besides, you may need to go backward and forwards several times. So it may seem to be a tedious job. But, some strategies will help you to read scientific articles easily. Let’s read the article in seven steps.
Step 1
Read the title of the paper, author names and affiliations, journal names, and year of publication. It will give you an overview of the content of the paper, the origin, and the time of publication of it.
Step 2
Carefully read the abstract. An abstract is a summary of the paper, where background, results, and implications, and its benefits are described concisely.
Step 3
Read the conclusion of the paper. You will find the decisions that were made in the article based on results and discussion. However, before moving to the conclusion, you may look at the last paragraph of the introduction, where you will find the aim of the study. This will help you to check the claims made by authors whether they are correlated or vague.
Step 4
After these three steps, if you find that this article will be helpful to your research, then check the methodology section, which is immediately after the introduction. Here, you will find the study area (for geological or environment-related studies), materials or chemicals used, which instrument or which model was used, and much more.
Step 5
Then you may think why should they do this research? Then quickly read the introduction. It will tell you the importance of the study and where is the existing gap in this type of study as well as how the authors tried to fill the gap.
Step 6
Then quickly go through the tables and graphs along with headings and sub-headings. Then carefully read the results and discussion and compare them with the conclusions made in this study.
Step 7
Now read the manuscript carefully, critically, and consciously.
During reading ask the following questions and get your answers from the article.
1. Which problem the research is going to solve?
2. Does it provide evidence (making compare and contrast with other works) to support its findings (results)?
3. Is the methodology repeatable? Can I use this method? Does it provide a clear and easily follow up methods?
4. Make notes on the paper (paper copy or electronically).
5. if you cannot agree on some parts, make a question and later try to find the answer.
6. Be suspicious. Do not believe that the writer is always true.
After critical reading:
1. write one or two-sentence summary of the paper.
2. Two strong points of the paper.
3. Two limitations or possible extensions you see for the ideas in the paper.
4. your opinion of the paper; primarily, the quality of the ideas, its potential impacts, and how it will be helpful in your research.
I hope this will help you in reading research articles effectively.
References
1. Keshav, Srinivasan. "How to read a paper." ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 37, no. 3 (2007): 83-84.
2. Rodriguez, N., 2015. Infographic: How to read a scientific paper. Retrieved June, 6, p.2019.
You must be logged in to post a comment.