Reading journal articles isn't like normal reading? That explains everything.
The biggest thing to keep in mind when you're reading a journal article is that it's NOT like reading a book. If you try to just read it straight through, it makes your head hurt, especially if it's not a topic you're very familiar with in the first place. It helps to sort of think like the researcher who did the project, and understand the paper as you would if they just sat down and explained it to you. So, the magical order for reading journal articles, courtesy Mr. Bob Gotwals:
1. Abstract - the little blurb at the beginning that describes the research question, the methods, the results, all in summary. You probably read this first anyway, especially if you found the article on your own, but this section is crucial, often because it will tell you whether the paper's even relevant to what you're doing. If there are any words you don't understand here, look them up right away because you'll see them a lot.
2. Introduction - Usually the next section of the paper, this will outline the background behind the field being investigated, often getting narrower and narrower as you understand why the researchers are even interested in this question. By the end, you should know exactly what the research question was.
3. Conclusion - Sounds like cheating, but the idea here is that you know what the question is - jumping to the conclusion lets you find out what the answer ended up being. Was the hypothesis supported? What additional questions were raised? In the end, what was the point? If you understand what happened, you are better prepared to understand how they figured it out.
4. Results and Discussion - Now get into details. What specific conclusions did they come to? How did they interpret their data? Make sure that you understand the thought process and reasoning behind the interpretation of the data.
5. Graphs and Charts - You should have been looking at these as they were referenced throughout the article anyway, but now concentrate on all of the figures in the paper. Think about your understanding of the data and results and see how that is being represented visually. Axis labels/titles/captions are crucial - don't just look at the pretty pictures!
6. Materials and Methods - Often, you don't even really need to read this section. It is useful if you are going to be conducting a similar experiment or assay. If so, you can compare what you are doing to the method used, or perhaps modify your protocol if something worked for them that didn't work for you. This section comes last because it's so specific - it either applies to you or it doesn't.
Hope that makes wading through the sea of literature a little easier. Just a couple of general pointers:
- Your highlighter is your best friend! Use something, anything to mark up your paper/write notes in the margins. If you need to look for a specific piece of information later, you won't have to reread the whole thing.
- dictionary.com and wikipedia are your next best friends. They are quick and easy resources if you come across a term you don't know, and usually fairly thorough.
- It's often helpful to type up a summary of an article after you read it. If you have a lot of papers, you won't necessarily remember what each one is about or why it was useful to you.
Have fun reading! :)
