Whether you are curious about science, investigating the sources of a new science story, or researching a new type of treatment your doctor has recommended, knowing how to read and interpret scientific papers is an important skill. Unfortunately, science papers are often dense, full of scientific jargon, and illustrated with figures that are easy to misinterpret. Today, as science and health issues become more and more present in our daily lives, it is even more important that everyone has the tools and capabilities to interpret scientific research. Below is a step-by-step guide to reading (and understanding) science papers.
1. Familiarize yourself with the different types of science papers
Science papers are incredibly diverse—every discipline has its own set of standard conventions and every journal has unique requirements. Most science papers fall into one of three main types: review articles, short reports/letters, and journal articles. Review articles are usually easy to identify because they are lengthy, broad in scope, and reference many sources (some review papers will have more than a hundred citations). These articles provide an overview of a particular field or topic, so they are often a great place to start when you’re beginning to research a subject. From the review article, you can find links to many reputable journal articles that can help you dive deeper into specific areas of research. There is no set structure for review articles, but they tend to be broken down into subtopics or specific areas of the research landscape.
On the other end of the spectrum, short reports/letters are often very short, specific papers that provide a brief snapshot of some important results that a researcher has found. These papers will usually be 1-2 pages long and provide a limited amount of data. The purpose of these kinds of papers is to share important or interesting data with the field at large in the interim before the researcher acquires enough data to write a full journal article.
Journal articles cover a single research question and detail the research done to answer that question. These papers typically have an abstract, an introduction, a methods section, a results section, a discussion section, and in some cases, a conclusion. Some journal articles will combine the results and discussion, and many articles will put the methods at the end in smaller font. It is also common these days to have lengthy supplemental materials, where the researchers add extra figures or methodology that couldn’t fit in the main journal article. Generally, each journal will have its own standards for formatting articles.
The majority of journal articles go through a process known as peer review, where a committee of topic experts review the article and ask for revisions/clarifications before the article is officially accepted. Most science journals require peer review, but if in doubt, you can usually find information about a journal’s peer review policy on their website. Some journal articles are published before peer review on preprint servers. A researcher may choose to publish their paper in a preprint server if they believe that sharing the data with the field at large is particularly important or time sensitive. But there are risks to publishing a preprint—the lack of peer review can reduce the article’s credibility, and some journals won’t publish articles that have previously been released as preprints. As a reader, it’s important to pay attention to whether a science article has been peer reviewed. If it’s a preprint, you may want to do more research and look at what other experts are saying about the results.
2. Skim the Paper
When you read a science paper, you may be tempted to jump in and try to read it from start to finish. This is almost never the best strategy as you can very quickly find yourself awash in technical details that don’t actually aid in your understanding of the underlying research. These details can be important if you want to repeat the experiment or expand on the findings, but even then, you probably won’t want to dig into those details right away. In the beginning, it’s important to figure out what the central research question is, what answers are revealed by the data, and what those answers mean in the context of the field.
Usually, you can get the answers to all those questions and more from just reading the abstract of the paper. A good abstract will summarize all the most important points of the paper, highlighting the key takeaways from each section. Abstracts are usually only about a paragraph long, but some journals will include longer abstracts that summarize each section of the paper individually. Either way, reading the abstract is a low effort way to understand the most salient aspects of the paper. It’s also a useful way to figure out whether the paper addresses a question you’re interested in.
After reading the abstract, the next area to look at is the figures. A journal article will usually have 3-5 figures (plus some extra figures in the supplemental material) with captions. Often, these figures will each be a conglomeration of multiple graphs, images, and diagrams that address a certain aspect of the main research question. To get a better understanding of the results and what they mean, look through each figure and their respective caption. Try to figure out what the purpose of the figure is in the overall context of the paper. Researchers are limited in the number of figures they can include in the article itself, so they are usually intentional with choosing figures that illustrate the story of the data. You can glean a lot about a paper just from the abstract and figures. For some extra context around why the results of the paper are important, try skimming through some of the subheadings in the discussion. If the paper has a separate conclusion section, reading through that can also provide a lot of helpful information about the broader implications of the research.
3. “Read” the Paper
After skimming the paper, you may still be left with some lingering questions about the research, especially if you aren’t as familiar with the field in general. At this point, it can be useful to read through the introduction. The introduction will provide all the relevant scientific context for the research, including what problem or gap the research is meant to address. The introduction lays the foundations for what the research results will mean in a greater context. Reading the discussion section next will help you connect the dots between the questions laid out in the introduction and the solutions presented by the data. The discussion will also usually provide extra information about what gaps and questions remain to be answered in future research. Now that you’ve read through the abstract, figures, introduction, and discussion, you should have enough information to understand the research and its greater importance. The results section usually doesn’t have any information that isn’t better summarized in the figures and the methods section is usually chock full of technical details that don’t matter much to the average reader.
4. Don’t be afraid to consult other sources
For many people, reading science papers can feel intimidating due to the overwhelming amount of technical language and scientific jargon. Don’t be hesitant to look up unfamiliar terms or concepts. In general, look for educational, governmental, or other peer-reviewed sources. Another good strategy is to look at the sources the paper references. If a particular sentence in the introduction touches on a concept you are unfamiliar with, look at the references for that sentence. And, if you want to know more about how the research has progressed since the paper was published, look at the newer papers that have cited your paper. A lot of journals and journal databases will have sidebars or search methods for finding all the papers that have cited the paper you are reading. In general, it’s always a best practice to consult multiple sources when researching a topic.
And there you have it—I hope this post makes reading science papers a little easier and more fun! If you enjoyed this post, check out last month’s Black History Month post on Percy Julian. Comment below or email us at contact@anyonecanscience.com to let us know what you think of this week’s post! And subscribe below for weekly science emails!
