Summaries

Biol 213: Genetics (Fall 2000)
How to Write a Summary of a Research Article

For Exams II and III, you will be asked to find a research article related to the topic covered by the exam and to write a summary of some aspect of interest to you. The summaries will be turned in along with the first page of the article and will constitute 15% of the grade for these exams. Note the critical words in the description above, "interest to you". You are asked to find articles that intersect with the genetic subjects under consideration and connect with your peculiar psychological makeup. Many of you may be tempted to search databases using keywords such as "tRNA", "translation", "genetic code", etc. More likely, however, you are interested not in these topics but in "breast cancer", "tooth decay", or "marmosets". Find articles that relate the topics discussed in class to those important in your life.

Finding an article
Problems understanding article?
How to write the summary
How not to write the summary
Back to: Genetics Home, Course at a glance?

How do I find an article? You are seeking a research article (not news, not review) that addresses a subject covered by the current exam. A research article can be recognized by its presentation of actual experimental results and a description of the methods used to obtain them. There are a few general approaches you might employ to find what you want, and I imagine that you will avail yourself of all of them at one time or another.

You might use the electronic resources in the library or on the Web (e.g., First Search and Biosis) to search for articles that meet your specifications.
You might identify a journal that addresses your particular interests and leaf through several issues until you find something pertinent. Click here for a list of possible journals.
You might first find a review article on the topic of interest and use it to direct you to appropriate research articles. You can find reviews by electronic means. Or you can click here for a list of possibly interesting reviews.

What if I don't understand half of the article? Do not panic! Focus on the other half, and ask what, if anything is missing from the story you are trying to tell. If you are stumped by a technique used in the article (and this may be a common experience), first ask yourself if you need to understand this technique in order to tell your story. A research article typically describes different experiments, many of which may be extraneous to the part of the article that interested you. However, if you judge the technique to be essential to your understanding of the point you wish to make, then do whatever is necessary to gain the insight you need. One likely way is to avail yourself of one of the resourcesat your disposal.

How do I write a summary of a research article? Your summary should consist of three short paragraphs (if you can organize it differently and still get the job done - great!).

Paragraph 1 explains why anyone would be interested in the part of the article you are about to present (this creates a hole that you will fill in the rest of the summary).
Paragraph 2 explains in terms readily understandable to others in the class what the authors did. Do not try to summarize the entire article! Focus on one interesting part. Note that you are saying what the authors did rather than what they found. Do not go into a detailed protocol. Give your readers a basic sense of what the experiment was about.
Paragraph 3 describes the basic result. If you like, you might also tie it back to your interests. In addition, somewhere in the summary, you should explain how the article relates to something covered on the current exam.

Here's an example of a good summary. And here's another.G6Pase.html

How not to write a summary. Do not succumb to the temptation to just paraphrase the authors' words. "After all," you might say, "the authors know what they are talking about and I do not." That may be true, but confusion is a temporary condition and you must not let it drive you to the bottle of sleeping pills. We chose this image deliberately, because paraphrasing is, in a sense, intellectual suicide. You are removing yourself from the creative process. Quoting is no better, so don't do it. Use your own words to mold the information from the article into a coherent story that another person can follow. Since your goals in writing a summary are different from the authors' goals in writing the full-sized article, it is inconceivable that a readable summary could be formed from bits and pieces of the article, any more than you could construct a hummingbird by piecing together the parts of a falcon. It is a struggle to understand the article and find your own story - it will always be a struggle, though it does get easier with practice. Realize that it is a worthwhile struggle. You gain by a firmer connection with what you read. We gain by hearing a new story rather than a rehash of a story we already have. Here is an example of a bad summary.

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