Many of us have felt frustration when searching for and reading through journal articles. You might spend time carefully going through an entire article, only to discover it’s not relevant to your work. Or maybe you read it a few weeks ago, but now, as you’re writing your paper, you can’t quite remember how to integrate those research findings effectively. This quick guide to reading journal articles helps you avoid moments like these by advising on a variety of techniques, including scanning and note-taking methods.
Page Outline
Click to skip to a section.
Before Reading a Journal Article
Exerting a little effort before you even begin reading will make all the difference. Familiarize yourself with the typical structure of journal articles, frame your reading experience, and prepare AI and note-taking tools.
Familiarize Yourself with the Structure
Suppose you are new to reading academic literature. In that case, you are probably not yet familiar with the typical structure of a journal article. While this is entirely normal at the beginning of your academic journey, it’s essential to learn about the flow of an article. Understanding and being able to anticipate a journal article’s structure allows you to naturally skip between sections, avoiding the frustration of reading irrelevant material.
Expand to explore journal article sections.
Abstract
- Succinctly summarizes the article, including relevant background and the main research findings.
Introduction
- Provides background knowledge on the topic and contextualizes the main idea with an explanation of research motivations, impact, or purpose.
Methods
- Describes how the authors investigated their research question(s), including data collection and analysis procedures.
- Discusses why this approach is appropriate.
Figures
- Depicts graphical representations (charts, graphs, maps, images, tables, etc.) of findings or other relevant information.
Conclusion
- Synthesizes the findings, commenting on their importance and implications.
Credit: Evaluating Information Libguide from Brown University
Frame Your Reading Experience
While reading a journal article, ask yourself questions that will yield a fruitful analysis of the material. For example, suppose you are building an annotated bibliography related to market research methodology. In that case, you might ask yourself how this study’s methods impact the research findings and whether their method is repeatable. These questions will guide your note-taking and highlighting of the article, which you can return to later. Identifying useful questions is the first step.
Common questions include:
- How is this article relevant to a class theme (if applicable) or to my own research interests?
- Does the article offer a unique perspective, perhaps contradicting others in the field, or new information?
- Can I revise and adopt this paper’s theoretical framework for my own work?
- Suppose the authors use interesting or innovative methods. Could I employ similar methods for a current research project (or in the future)?
- Might any of the article references be useful for further research?
Credit: Evaluating Information Libguide from Brown University
You may also look up the author(s) of your journal article before reading. What is their academic background? How might their prior research projects provide context for this paper?
Prepare Your Tools
AI Outline
Google Scholar PDF Reader is a Chrome browser extension that changes the presentation of PDFs. Add the browser extension, then view journal articles as PDFs in Chrome. Alongside the journal article, you will see an AI-generated overview with key takeaways from the article as bullet points, which you can select to navigate to relevant sections of the document quickly.
Digital Note-Taking & Highlighting Methods
While Zotero is commonly known as a citation tool, this free platform can also be used to take notes and annotate research articles. One advantage of using Zotero for this purpose is that everything—your notes, your highlights, and your citations for each relevant article—is in one place. For more information, read Harvard Library’s research guide on Zotero.
UBC grants its students access to select Microsoft Office 365 applications, including OneNote. OneNote is an excellent tool for taking handwritten or typed notes, as you can also insert media, record audio, and do math within OneNote. For more information on OneNote, visit Microsoft’s support page.
LiquidText (available for iOS, macOS, and Windows 10) allows you to quickly and easily pull excerpts from a paper into the “workspace” around the document. These excerpts then link back to the text. Their basic tier is free, but you can pay a one-time fee for more advanced features.
Evernote and Notability also offer free tiers.
Credit: Digital Notetaking Tools page by Emory University
Analog Method
If you prefer to highlight and take notes on paper, you may later wish to access these documents digitally. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can use the built-in notes app to scan documents and upload them to files stored on the cloud (instructions here). Alternatively, for both iPhone and Android users, you can scan documents directly into Google Drive using their app (instructions here). Whichever way you choose to go, set up a file system for your classes and/or research projects that facilitates easy discoverability.
While Reading a Journal Article
Skim the Outline
If you set up Google Scholar PDF Reader, skim the AI outline first. When reading for class, this overview gives you an idea of what to expect. When reading for a research project, the overview is invaluable for determining whether the article is relevant—without wasting time by reading in-depth.
Identify Research Questions
Once you’ve decided to take a closer look, start by identifying the research questions (RQs). What problem or gap are the authors trying to address? Highlight the RQs if you can find them. They are most likely in the abstract and/or introduction. Skim the introduction, acquiring context for the RQs.
Annotation Tips & Tricks
- Categorize information by using different coloured highlighters
- Ideas/concepts/words that you don’t understand should be highlighted in a colour that makes them easy to identify
- If you need to, create a colour key
- Write in the margins
- Summarize long paragraphs with just a few words
- Point out limitations
- Ask follow-up questions
- Avoid over-highlighting, as the essential phrases/sections would be buried among the less important.
Read the Conclusion/Discussion
Turn to the conclusion/discussion section. The authors typically discuss the implications of their statistical findings here, so this section should be easier to read than the results.
Read the entire section before taking any notes. Students often make the mistake of taking notes line-by-line as they read for the first time. However, without having read the entire section, identifying what’s most important is tricky. Line-by-line note-taking may mean you spend more time with the article, but your notes are ultimately less helpful—similar to over-highlighting.
Visit Other Sections as Needed
Once you have identified the RQs, skimmed the introduction, and read the conclusion/discussion section, decide whether your task calls for a closer read. If you don’t understand the conclusion/discussion, then you should read through the results section. If your instructor intends for you to critically engage with the article, then you should read both the methodology and results sections, looking for limitations beyond the ones declared by the author(s).
Reread
Return to words or concepts that you didn’t understand the first time. Use Google to look up background information that the authors may be assuming you already know. If in-text citations immediately follow the author’s integration of a confusing concept, track the author back to the full citation in the reference list, look up the cited work, and decide (based on the AI outline or abstract) whether this is important contextual information.
Remind yourself of the sections highlighted as key points. Add or remove highlights now that you have read the entire paper. Take additional notes as needed.
After Reading a Journal Article
Summarize
At the end of your notes, summarize the article in 3-4 bullet points. This will help ensure you understand the content and serve as a helpful reference for future review.
Check “Cited By”
If you found this article valuable or intriguing, explore which papers have cited it. To do this, search for the article title in the UBC library catalogue, locate the correct result, and click on “cited by” (if the option is available). Then, review the new search results to see if any of the cited works are worth reading.