Table of Contents:
What is Research Paper?
Much of scientists read research papers to stay up to date in their field, advance their scientific understanding, review manuscripts, or gather information for a project proposal or research work.
A research paper is a form of academic writing that provides an in-depth analysis, evaluation, or interpretation of a single topic, based on empirical evidence such as factual data.
Most of the time, as a researcher, you need to collect and read many research papers in your field of study before doing your own research project. Therefore you need to have the skill to understand research papers quickly and efficiently, and this article aims to help you to achieve that.
Structure of Research Papers
Before we get into how to read a research paper, you need to understand the structure of research papers. Almost all research papers follow similar structure and contain 6 main sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions.
The Abstract section is the summary or the condensed version of the research paper. It includes one or more sentences assigned to summarize each research paper section.
The Introduction gives the reader a general knowledge of what the research is about and shows the relationship of the research work and the wider field related to the research topic.
The Methods section (Methodology) includes all the materials and methods the researcher used to conduct the experiment and how he/she got the results.
The Results section (the Findings) tells the reader what the author exactly found based on the gathered data.
The Discussion section is where the author interprets and justify the research results, and discuss the significance and implications of the results in light of other related researches in the literature.
The Conclusions section provides a clear understanding of the key findings or argument that your research has advanced, why they are valuable, and how they can be applied. In addition, It discusses any limitations or weaknesses of the research study.
How to Read Effectively
Reading a research paper is a completely different process than reading an article about science in a newspaper or blog. Reading a research paper should not be done in a linear way (from beginning to end); instead, it should be done strategically.
Before you start reading a scientific research paper, you should previously have four main questions in your mind, and by finding the answers of these questions in the research paper you are about to read, you will get a good overall understanding of this paper. These four questions are:
The answers of these questions can easily be found or located in any research paper because, as we previously mentioned, almost all scientific research papers follow the same structure.
Let us take a real scientific research paper (Figure 1) as an example and try to understand it by locating the answer of each question alone.
Figure 1: A screenshot of a first page of a research paper
You can download the whole research paper by clicking on the following PDF file:
1. What are the objectives of the research?
The objective(s) of any research paper can be found in three places in a research paper:
In the Abstract section (Figure 2)
At the end of the Introduction section (Figure 3)
Some research may include the objectives in the first paragraph of the Conclusion section.
Figure 2: A screenshot of the Abstract section of a research paper
Figure 3: A screenshot of the Introduction section
As shown in Figure 2 and 3, it is clear that the researchers aimed to study the effect of different concentrations of foliar application of amino acids on sweet corn plants and the sprays was applied at different plant stages.
Since we clearly knew why the researcher conduct the experiment, we can now move to the second question and explore the methods he used to achieve this objective(s) and got the results.
2. What are the methods the researcher used to get the research results?
The answer of this question can be easily found in two places:
In the Abstract section (Figure 4).
And in more detail in the Methods (Materials & Methods) section (Figure 5).
Figure 4: A screenshot of the Abstract section
Figure 5: A screenshot of the Methods section
From Figure 4 and 5, we can know how the seeds were planted and the concentrations of the foliar application of amino acids used, on what plant stages the foliar was applied, what measurements (data) the researchers took, etc.
Now, we are ready to the third question to explore what the researchers found (the results) after they applied their methodology and analyzed the data they obtained from the sprayed corn plants.
3. What are the main results of the research?
The answer of this question can be found in two places:
In the Abstract section (Figure 6).
And in more detail in the Results section (Figure 7).
Figure 6: A screenshot of the Abstract section
Figure 7: A screenshot of the Results section. Note that in this paper the Results and Discussion sections are combined in one section
The Abstract and Results section (Figure 6 and 7) tell us which foliar amino acids concentration is effective comparing to other concentrations, what plants characteristics significantly responded to the application, what best plant stage to apply the effective concentration, etc.
To get more understanding of the research findings, It is also recommended to go to the tables and figures while reading the Results section.
4. What the researcher concluded based on the results of the research?
The answer of this question can be found in two places:
In the Abstract section (Figure 8).
And in more detail in the Conclusion section (Figure 9).
Figure 8: A screenshot of the Abstract section
Figure 9: A screenshot of the Results section.
Summary
This article aims to help you to have the skill to understand research papers quickly and efficiently.
Always before you start reading a scientific research paper, you should previously have four main questions in your mind, and by finding the answers of these questions in the research paper you are about to read, you will get a good overall understanding of this paper. The answers of these questions can easily be found or located in any research paper because almost all scientific research papers follow the same structure and format.
This quick way of reading is beneficial to get a basic understanding of a paper and to help you decide whether to read the paper again multiple times or not, delve into the finer details, and/or use it as a reference in your research work.
Do you have any other techniques or tips for reading research papers?
Let us know by leaving a comment!
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