Finding research articles

1. Why read the article?
2. How to decide whether to read an article
3. First pass through an article
4. Close reading of small part of article
5. Getting help

Why read the article?

Because that's where truth lies (for more on this see Why bother with research articles?).

But that answer is not focused enough to get you through the arduous process of reading an article. You need a good reason to do it, and the popular reason ("Because the teacher told me to") will not get you very far. For you to keep your sanity in the face of overwhelming scientific verbiage, you need a reason to plough forward. You need to be convinced that reading the article will meet some personal need.

The reason for reading an article is not likely to be the same reason you pick up a novel ("Entertain me!") or a text book ("Teach me!"). Research articles are not designed to do either. They uniquely are designed to present experimental truth - what was actually observed and under what conditions. They are not designed to fill your open cranium with insight.

If you approach a research article as a passive receptacle, you will be overwhelmed, confused, and disappointed. For you to gain from reading a research article, you need to take control. What truth are you looking for? Does this article promise to give you the truth you seek? No? Then toss it over your shoulder. Maybe? Then examine it further, enough to make your decision. Yes? Then read selectively, throwing out the extraneous parts and focusing on the parts that address your needs. Even if you're reading an article to get a general idea of what kinds of questions are asked in this field, that's still enough of a cleaver to enable you to throw out most of the article and thereby retain your sanity.

Even this entails a sizable commitment of time, but at least you'll often get what you asked for.

How to decide whether to read an article

1. First, you need to have a goal in mind against which to evaluate the article (see above).
    
2. Quick decision
   • Was the article suggested to you by a review article or a possibly knowledgable person? If so, go to Step 3.
      
   • Does the title of the article suggest to you that it could address the goals you have set? If so, go to Step 3. If not, trash the article and move on. If maybe, continue. (By the way, this illustrates the importance of writing good, descriptive titles)
      
   • Does the abstract of the article suggest to you that it could address the goals you have set? If so, go to Step 3. If not, trash the article and move on. If maybe, make a judgement whether it's worthwhile to expend more time on this borderline article.
      
3. Keep the question open of whether to read the article as you proceed with a first, quick skim.

First pass through an article

• Abstract Abstracts are often quite confusing, as they generally are written within tight word limits and may be more designed to attract hits by search engines than to elicit understanding by humans. I generally spend no more than a couple of seconds on an abstract, looking for something that will immediately confirm the article as worth reading (i.e. able to answer my question) or help me realize that the search engine was fooled and that I should move on to another article.
   
• Introduction
  The Introduction should set up the question addressed by the experiments that are at the heart of the article. This section tests the ability of the authors to tell a story, one that leads the reader to that possibly obscure question through compelling steps from a broad problem of obvious importance. Most authors are not up to the task, and that's a shame, but ultimately there's nothing you can do about this except resolve to write comprehensible articles yourself. It's important to realize that there are poorly written articles that contain gems hidden within them and well written articles that say nothing you want to know about.

  Skim the Introduction, looking to see whether you recognize the experimental question addressed by the authors, generally at the end of the Introduction. This is not the broad question of the type that usually begins articles. The authors may believe that their article has something to do with the cure for cancer, but the real subject of the article is the experiment the authors actually reported. A good Introduction should make clear what that experiment was.

• Materials and Methods
  Don't waste your time reading this section, unless your goal is to find out something about a specific technique. When you judge the article is worth reading AND you find an experiment within it you want to understand, THEN (maybe) it will be time to read part of this section.
   
• Results Your goal is to find results that (if you understood them) would help you reach an answer to the question you brought to the article. It's too early to try to understand the result. First you need to find a result that suits your purposes.

  Briefly consider each section, figure, and table that you find in the article, making a quick assessment whether the item addresses your question, marking those that do. If you end up with no pertinent items, trash the article and move on. Otherwise, rejoice!

• Discussion
  Generally a waste of time at this point, unless you're about to close the book on this article. I usually don't bother with this section until I've read what I want to read from the Results and have some curiosity as to what the authors thought about it.
   
• References
  You might think it's silly to read the references, but sometimes that's the most useful part of an article. If the article is close to what you want but not quite, it might refer to another article that's closer yet. Better to let someone who knows something about the area do the work of finding articles for you.

Close reading of small part of article

By this time you should have either gone on to another article or identified one or more figures or tables that might address your question. The process up to this point should have taken little time, and few articles will pass the test. This is good, because the rest of the process -- understanding the figure or table -- will consume gobs of time and effort.

Unfortunately, I can offer here only general advice (even more general than the preceding) on how to gain insight into the question you brought to the article:

• The route to insight is to understand the result you identified.
• You can't understand a result without understanding the experiment that produced it.
• If you understand an experiment at first reading, then you must be an expert in the field. The rest of us will need to work at it.
• Sometimes you can get a sufficient description of the experiment from the legend of the pertinent figure or footnote to the pertinent table. Now is not the time to ignore the fine print.
• Another place to look is the previously ignored Materials and Methods section. Skim it to identify the portion of it that seems to describe the result you deem important.
• Understand that the Materials and Methods section is there to enable others to replicate the experiment. This is not your goal. Therefore much of the detail is extraneous. There's probably no reason why you should care about the concentration of magnesium in the buffer. Your aim is to understand the principle behind the experiment.
• Sometimes articles outsource the principle of the experiment to earlier articles (they really shouldn't do this). Pay attention to key references and seek them out when necessary.
• Google is your friend. There have been a lot of people who have sought to understand the method that's cracking your brain. Some of them may have put explanations on the web.
• Your colleagues are also your friends. Maybe someone amongst them has gone down the same road before you.
• The TAs and I are also your friends.

Getting help

The process outlined above may help you to identify specific holes in your knowledge that you need to fill. Once you've identified them and determined that all your tricks (Google, etc) have proven insufficient, then you can approach someone you suspect may be knowledgeable and present a well defined question, composed of the following parts:

• Motivation: "What I'm trying to find out is..."
• Background: "To do that, I found this article [reference] and ran across the following result..."
• Conflict: "I realized that to understand this result, I needed to understand X..."
• Prior efforts: "Here's what I've tried to do to figure this out:..."
• Identification of hole: "I think I'd understand the whole thing, if I only grasped what they meant by Y..."
• Request: "What insight can you provide into...X...Y..."

Remember, it's YOUR confusion, not mine. If you dial in with "I'm soooo confused. Please help!", I will be helpless. There are an infinite number of ways to be confused, and it's your responsibility to explain your specific state of mind.