Finding research articles
- Why read the article?
- How to decide whether to read an article
- First pass through an article
- Close reading of small part of article
Why read the article?
There are too many research articles to read - tens of thousands per year - and
reading even one constitutes a sizable commitment of time. You need a reason to do it.
A popular response ("Because the teacher told me to") is not a reason that will get you
very far, and it probably would not be very effective in engaging your full attention in any case.
You need to be convinced that reading the article will meet some personal need.
The reason for reading an article not the same as you might have for picking 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 this entails a sizable commitment of time, but at least you'll often get what you asked for.
For you to keep your sanity in the face of overwhelming scientific verbiage, you need a reason to
plough forward.
How to decide whether to read an article
- First, you need to have a goal in mind against which to evaluate the article (see above).
- Quick decision
- Was the article suggested to you by a review article or a possibly knowledgable person? If so, go to Step 2.
- 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.
- 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 (e.g. the concentration of magnesium in the
buffer) is extraneous. Your aim is to understand the principle behind the experiment.
- Sometimes articles outsource the principle of the experiment to earlier articles. 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 TA and I are also your friends.
As you're working through this process, it is helpful to explain your current understanding of the experiment
and result to someone. If no one is around, then you'll do: explain it to yourself. Write out an
explanation of both, and examine what you've wrote, noting all the evasions and ambiguities. Do whatever
is necessary to complete your understanding so that the imperfections melt away.
This process helps you to identify specific holes in your knowledge you need filled. 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 knowledgable 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: "If you have any insight into..."
Alternatively, you could write a summary of the
experiment, highlighting the conceptual holes that need to be filled, and send that in.
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