Peer reviewed articles can be a challenge to read!  Remember, it’s a conversation between scholars and researchers, so it will include a lot of jargon, or experty words that everyday people don’t often use.  That’s okay because you can always look up any words you don’t know.

Anatomy of a Peer Reviewed Article

The good news is, peer reviewed articles all follow the same basic template.

• Title and Author – typically, they will have more than one author and give you some basic information about each author.
• Abstract – a summary of what the article is about to help you decide quickly if it is relevant to your research.
• Introduction – describes the topic or problem, the goal of the research, and why it is important.
• Article text – may include a literature review, experiment, or study.
• Charts and graphs – and other information relating to the research.
• Conclusion – or summary of the results of the research and the impact of those results.
• References – or a list of sources the authors used to publish their research.  Use this list to find additional sources on your topic.

How to Read a Peer Reviewed Article

When we read a novel or book for fun, we read linearly, meaning we start at the beginning and read through to the end.  Reading a peer reviewed article is different.

Read Strategically, not Linearly.

• Mine the text for pertinent information, look for particular sections that contain vital information, read the whole article but only read those pertinent sections in real depth.
• Read the Abstract, which will tell you a lot about the content of the article and whether it is actually relevant to your research.
• Check out the citations, especially in the Introduction section.
• Read the conclusion and discussion sections.
• Look for charts and graphs, and read around these sections.
• Finally, check out the bibliography for more sources that may be pertinent to your research.

This video is about the anatomy of a scholarly article. Once you know the typical framework for these articles, you can quickly scan and decide whether an article will support your research.