Digest #150: How To Read An Academic Paper
In the past few weeks, my students (Carolina here) have repeatedly asked for resources on how to best read scientific papers. When you are given academic articles to read, you may be inclined to read them from beginning to end. However, much can be gained if you go through the paper systematically with some questions and guidance in mind. Established reseachers very often have aims in mind when reading a paper. They may be interested in how exactly the study was conducted and what measures were used - in that case they would focus more on the Method section of a paper. Alternatively, they could be interested in which papers or theories were used to justify a research question in an article and, therefore, would pay closer attention to sections in the Introduction. So, reading an academic paper is very often a goal-oriented activity. In today’s digest, I’d like to present five resources that can help to master reading and comprehending academic papers. Enjoy!
1. How to read and learn from scientifc literature, even if you’re not an expert by Brenda Wingfield, The Conversation, @ConversationEDU
This is a brief post that sets the stage for reading scientific papers. It gives a broad overview of what sections you will usually find in a scientific paper.
2. How to (seriously) read a scientific paper by Elisabeth Pain for Science Magazine, @ScienceMagazine
This blog post presents the ways how different people tackle reading academic papers. Doctoral candidates, professors, and postdocs were asked how they go about reading scientific papers and it is interesting to learn about the different approaches.
Image from Pixabay
3. QALMRI Instructions by Brosowsky and Parshina
QALMRI stands for Question, Alternatives, Logic, Method, Results, and Inferences and proposes guiding questions for each section of an academic paper and introduces a more elaborate approach to reading a scientific paper. While reading a specific section in the paper, try to obtain answers to the different guiding questions. This technique helps to take a critical view on an academic paper and to dig a bit deeper of what it means. I need to thank one of my colleagues, Phil McAleer, for pointing me to this resource.
4. How to read an academic article by Teesside University, Student & Library Services, @TeesUniLib
This resource briefly describes different reading strategies on how to read an academic article and walks you through the different sections of an article, but the best bit of this resource is a video by Tim Lockman from Kishwaukee College Library that gives a demonstration on how reading an academic article unfolds.
5. A guide to reading and analysing academic articles by Amanda Graham, Yukon College
This is a longer paper that gives a more in-depth instruction on what to pay attention to when reading scientific papers. It again taps more on obtaining a full understanding of a paper and refelcting on whether the authors accomplished to communicate their research successfully to their target audience.
From time to time, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Occasionally we publish a guest digest, and If you'd like to propose a guest digest click here. Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:
Digest #145: Elaborative Interrogation
Digest #146: The Psychology of “Zoom Fatigue”
Digest #147: Making Your Material Digitally Accessible
