Understanding and engaging with Scientific research articles can be challenging. Work through the tabs on the box below for some tips and tricks to make it easier!
Please reach out to me or Dr. Hicks at any point if you need help!
Reading a Scientific research article is NOT like reading a murder mystery, where skipping to the end spoils it. You'll have an easier time if you look at certain parts FIRST before trying to read the article start to finish. Dr. Hicks suggests:
1) Read the ABSTRACT and try to get a good handle on it.
2) Skip to the FIGURES. Can you make sense of those?
3) Look at the CONCLUSIONS.
Click on the next tab for how to read through these sections the first time.
Skimming and close reading are techniques you can use when trying to dissect a research article, but they are useful at different moments in the process.
Skimming is when you bounce along the surface of an article--it's as if you are on a jet ski, touching down on the top of the water, without going deep. You are reading bits and pieces quickly to get a general overview, not reading carefully.
Close reading is when you are diving deep, reading an article carefully. It may mean reading sentences or sections multiple times. It may mean looking up concepts with which you aren't familiar. It may mean taking breaks and coming back to it if you're struggling.
But when should you use each of these techniques?
Use Skimming FIRST:
Why start with skimming? It gives you a strong sense of where the article is going before you try to wrestle with the nitty gritty details (and risk getting bogged down in them). Skimming is also necessary to tell you if this article is even going to work for you in the first place (are there 5 figures? Is it about Biochemistry? Skimming will tell you).
Use close reading AFTER skimming:
Don't skip the close reading! You'll need it to understand the article well enough to discuss it. Just don't start there!
As a side note, you might also employ scanning, which is when you are looking for a particular word somewhere in the paper. There's a super easy way to do this in an online article: hit CTRL + F on a PC (Command F on a Mac), type in the word and hit enter. Boom! This works for any website or PDF. There are also ways to do this on phones and other devices--google it if you're interested!
As you're working through an article, you'll often find terminology, techniques or concepts you don't understand. Even for advanced students of Chemistry and Biology like yourselves, it can seem like reading a foreign language. THIS IS NORMAL!!! Don't be discouraged; just look up what you don't know!
Googling it can provide you a quick Cliffs-notes-style understanding, but the quality of the information often isn't great, and you'll have an easier time with better sources of information. Here are some suggestions:
Online Chemistry Dictionaries available through the library: Experiment with these!
Biochemistry and Chemistry dictionaries and encyclopedias at the Library: We have MANY of these, plenty to go around. If I were a student in this class, I would check one out to have on hand.
Don't want to spend extra time in the library right now? Order one of the books and pick it up at the main desk--you'll be in and out in 5 minutes! You'll find directions here, under "Requesting a Library pickup". (You can also consult that guide for the most current info on the library during the pandemic and study in place. Current library hours are on the Library Tab of MyRedDragon.)
For your reference, here again are Dr. Hicks' Criteria:
1. Paper is from a *peer-reviewed journal*, preferably a journal that is well-known in the field (like Journal of Biological Chemistry, Biochemistry, Cell, PNAS, etc.). Avoid Science and Nature papers (too much detail is relegated to Supplemental Materials)
2. Paper is "full-length" meaning it has at least 5 figures and maybe a table or 2. It is also not a review article, but a research paper.
3. Paper is about Biochemistry, not Chemistry or Biology.
Red Flags for too Chemistry:
--does not have basis in a biological problem, or does not link back to the biological problem.
--focuses too much on spectroscopy or syntheses
Red Flags for too Biology:
--No chemical structures
--All animal models, without a molecular understanding of the experiment.
