Scientific knowledge is constantly growing, and there is no better way to learn something new than by reading a scientific article. A scientific article often presents the results of a single scientific experiment (although there are exceptions, such as meta-analyses or reviews — literature reviews on a specific topic and experiments in this area). Scientific articles usually follow a standardized structure that is not commonly seen outside the scientific environment, and it can take practice to read scientific articles effectively. This topic will guide you through the structure of a scientific article, explain how they are different from other articles and books, and give advice on how to get the most benefit from reading scientific articles.
What is a science article?
If you look at a scientific article from a hundred years ago, you might be surprised by how different it is from an article published this year. Articles from a hundred years ago were more like works of art — complex language, lack of standard structures, and huge volumes made them difficult to understand.
In the last 50 years, the rate of scientific discovery has continually increased, and an incredible amount of new information has been generated — maybe even more than was learned in the last few centuries combined. This has had a big impact on how scientific articles are written and published. They are the critical link between different scientists and different fields of knowledge. Therefore, scientific articles acquired two distinctive properties.
First, modern scientific articles are more strictly arranged. They have a clear structure that informs you where to look for the information you are interested in. If you want to know how they performed a specific type of experiment, you can skip to the "Methods" section. Second, scientific articles build on existing knowledge and articles. If you go to the Google Scholar website, you see their motto, which perfectly reflects scientific reality: "standing on the shoulders of giants." Another important feature of scientific articles follows from this — each statement or fact requires a reference to another scientific article. You can't just mention in an article about cat purring that "it is known that cats purr at 27 GHz." The fact has to either be evident from the data you present or be proven by a link to the article in which it was experimentally observed (even if you yourself wrote that other article).
Structure of science paper
The structure of scientific papers is generally straightforward and fairly standardized to make them easier to understand. Let us have an example — the paper about the voice call signs of antelopes. This is a web version of a paper, so it has a sidebar where you can see the structure of the paper, from "Abstract" to "Rights and permissions." Some of the parts shown there are specific to that paper and the journal it is published in, but there are some consistent sections that appear in most articles.
Abstract
First of all, scientific papers have an abstract. An abstract is a paper in miniature: it highlights the main points of the experiment. The abstract mentions the scientific problem, methods, main results, and conclusions. This part is used for a quick look at an article: some readers use it to gain a general understanding of the problem or whether the article is worth the time to read the whole thing. In our example, the abstract is quite extensive and takes several paragraphs, but in most articles, it consists of just a few sentences. If you want to know what this article is about — read this part first! The main question of this part is: what is it about?
Introduction
The second part of the article is background or introduction. This part is very important because here is where the authors describe why the experiments are important and provide information that will help the reader understand the rest of the article. It includes descriptions of previous experiments and contains links to other studies. Such references are extremely important and will help you find other works on the topic. The introduction should clearly substantiate the necessity of the article itself — why the authors consider it necessary to investigate the question and what they will contribute to the field of knowledge. The main question of this part is: why.
Methods
The experiments used to generate the data presented in the article are thoroughly described in the methods section. A good scientific style requires a clear and detailed description of all methods, technologies, and tools used in the experiment. Here you will find not only a step-by-step story about specific techniques but even brand names of chemicals and versions of software. All this is done to ensure that the experiment is easily reproducible by other scientists. Reproducibility is an important part of scientific knowledge. The main question of this part is: how.
Results
The results part describes all the results obtained during the experiment. Nota bene! — no conclusions are described here, only dry bare facts. In our example article, this is clearly visible — it's full of numbers and diagrams. In this part, data is presented visually in figures, diagrams, maps, and tables, allowing you to quickly identify the new data the author is presenting. The main question of this part is: what new data was found.
Discussion and conclusion
The discussion part is freer. The authors discuss how the results of the experiment can solve the problem. Correlations are found here, comparisons are made, and sometimes even bold assumptions. The main question of this part is: what this tells us.
Last but not least, there is the conclusion. This part is generally short and summarizes all the conclusions drawn from the experiment. There are no questions in this part, only the answers. After the conclusions, part comes the bibliography, which mentions absolutely all literature sources used in the article. Usually, they are listed in the order they are mentioned in the body of the article, but there are many different citation systems, and some use an alphabetical listing. Pay attention to the letter or number — by finding them in the text of the article, you can find the information that was quoted.
These are the main sections that appear in every scientific paper, but sometimes there are others. For instance, supporting information like raw data, acknowledgements of who funded the project, and information about the authors might all have their own section.
How to read a science article
The way you read a scientific article depends on your goals. If you want a general idea of what was done, reading the abstract and conclusions is enough. If you are interested in the experimental procedures and the author's reasoning, read the results and conclusions. If your goal is to reproduce the results of the experiment or use the methods mentioned in the article, carefully study the methods section.
Conclusion
The scientific article is devoted to the experiment, its results, and relevant conclusions. It has a strict framework with clearly defined parts. A scientific article does not have to be read like a work of fiction from cover to cover — the way you read it depends on your goals.