Scientific articles are written by experts for experts, so they can seem intimidating at first. But with practice, you can learn how to navigate an article to get the information you need and to think critically about a paper's claims.

Check out these resources for some different strategies that can help you master the art of reading scientific articles:

How to Read a Scientific Article by USU Libraries, CC BY-NC 4.0

Modules

These interactive tutorials each walk you through a different reading strategy, including examples. Try them out and see which one works for you.

• NLA Reading Scientific Research
• C.R.E.A.T.E.S: An Innovative Method for Understanding Scientific Articles
• SPARK Effective Reading Strategies
• Excelsior Online Reading Lab

Handouts

These handouts offer quick tips for reading and understanding.

• How to read and understand a scientific article by Dr. Jennifer Raff
• How to Read a Scientific Article by Purugganan and Hewitt

Every genre of writing has a purpose. A newspaper article informs, a novel entertains, and a scientific article shares a researcher's findings with their peers. Just like an essay in English class is written to prove a thesis, a scientific article is designed to persuade the reader that the scientist's interpretations of their results are correct. You might agree with the conclusions they draw from the data - but you might not!

When you're reading a scientific paper, think critically about the study and its results. This doesn't mean looking for mistakes or problems. You are simply considering what the research has done well and where it could be better. Consider why the researcher designed the study this way, whether the results make sense, and what the next steps might be to learn more about the topic. In addition to the analysis questions in your Reading Research assignment, here are some questions to help you get started:

• Does the study design have flaws or limitations? How might these limitations affect the results? 
• What evidence are the authors using to support their conclusions? Are there other ways to interpret the data?
• Do the authors cite a variety of papers? If any of the cited papers disagree with the results of this study, how do they explain the contradictory results?
• If you were designing a follow-up study, what would you test or do differently?

Check out these resources for other strategies to think critically about the scientific papers you're reading:

• University of Waterloo's Writing and Communication Centre Guide to Critical Analysis and Evaluation offers some tips and tricks to help you engage critically with academic writing.
• The University of Toronto Scarborough Centre for Teaching and Learning has a couple great resources for understanding academic writing in a critical way:
  • Active Verbs in Academic Writing is a good starting point to understand how academic language can be different from everyday language. Look for the words in the "showing uncertainty" section to help you identify when an author is stating a fact versus sharing their interpretation.
  • Critical Questions for Proactive Reading suggests some more questions to keep in mind as you read a paper.

When reading a journal article, you may come across scientific terms you don't know. Scientific dictionaries or encyclopedias can be a great resource to quickly get familiar with what these words mean. You can search in LibrarySearch to find more.