Reading and understanding scholarly articles can be challenging at first. Luckily, with practice, you'll find that scholarly articles are always organized in the same way, making the information within them easy to find. Of course, they may still include specialized terminology that you don't know well. In that case, keep our library's subject dictionaries close at hand, so you can look up unfamiliar words as you go.
The following links offer some excellent advice for reading and interpreting scholarly research articles:
- Anatomy of a Scholarly Article (NCSU): Presented here are the first and last pages of a scholarly article. Click on highlighted areas of the article to learn about clues to look for when identifying scholarly articles.
- Art of reading a journal article: Methodically and effectively
- Efficient reading of papers in science and technology (PDF file)
- How to read an academic article without losing your mind (video)
(Note: some of the tips above are written for a specific discipline (science, technology, etc.). They will apply to scholarly articles in other disciplines as well.)
Also take some time to explore Writing@APUS' Research Process page:
