Article Structure

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Most scholarly research papers will be divided into the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions/Interpretations/Discussion. This structure is a key to understanding the article. The order of some sections will depend on the journal in which it’s published. The front page always includes an Article's title, Authors and their Affiliations, and an Abstract followed by an Introduction.

Scholarly Article in Chemical Journal

Front Page Example

Here we use this front page example to illustrate a scholarly article's structure. Note, that depending on the journal's format, you may see slight variations.

As you skim over the front page, you may extract a lot of general ideas about the article:

Look at the Authors and their institutional affiliations. Some institutions (e.g. University of Michigan) are well-respected; others (e.g. the Discovery Institute ) may appear to be legitimate research institutions but are actually agenda-driven. Tip: google “Discovery Institute” to see why you don’t want to use it as a scientific authority on evolutionary theory.

Look at the Journal in which it’s published. Reputable journals will be indexed by reputable databases: Pubmed (if it is biomedical literature), SciFinder or Reaxys (if it is chemical literature), as well as by general databases such as Dimensions Plus, Scopus, or Web of Science. Beware of questionable journals. Use the tool Think. Check. Submit. to identify trusted journals for their research.

Note the Publication Date. For many areas, current research is more relevant.

Note the Article Type. The regular journal article reports a specific research project and has a Methods section that describes in detail how the research hypothesis was tested. A review article is a publication that summarizes the current state of understanding on a topic based on the published research. It is a survey of the field. It does not report new facts and has no Experimental section. Communication is a short description of the outstanding discovery without a detailed study. Communication article conveys a new finding with the purpose of encouraging more research on this topic

Additional Sections of the Scholarly Article

After the Introduction section that starts on the first page, you will encounter the main body of the research paper. It includes the following sections:

Results - detailed description of the facts revealed by the study. This section is very technical and contains tables, figures, and schemes;
Discussion - detailed explanation of the results viewed in the context of existing theories and models;
Experimental (or Methods) - details of the experimental setup that would allow others to reproduce the given study;
Conclusions (sometimes, it is not a separate section but only the last paragraph of the Discussion section) - concise summary of findings, their significance and next challenges;
Acknowledgements - thank you note to funding agencies and selected colleagues;
References - bibliography used to support or contradict the findings of the present study. A research paper usually contains 20-30 references when it is an original study (primary source) and over 100 references when it is a review article (secondary source). Citing works of others is a good research ethics. References help the reader to learn more about the field, to verify the claims of a given research study, and to identify similar research.

Pay Attention to Vocabulary

As you read these sections, write down every single word that you don’t understand. Scholarly science literature uses a lot of technical jargon and you won’t understand the paper if you don’t understand the vocabulary.

For technical vocabulary, consider using reference sources:

Encyclopedias (e. g. Wiley Encyclopedia of Chemical Biology, Encyclopedia of Biological Chemistry);
Handbooks, Textbooks (mainly basic concepts), Edited books on specific topics;
Review articles.