PHSC 02 Huff

Library databases contain many different types of articles, and it's important that you are able to tell the differences because there will be many times in your college career that you will be asked to use specific types of articles. 

Watch the Video

Learn how to distinguish between popular, trade, and scholarly articles in the following video. 

"Identifying Types of Articles" (3:27) by Andersen Library, Reference & Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Sciences and Social Sciences Articles

The list below describes the components of scholarly journal articles in the Sciences and Social Sciences. The majority of articles in these disciplines will have the sections listed below.

• Abstract: brief summary of the article, including research question, methodology and results.
• Introduction: background information about the topic, leading up to why this study is being done, and may include a brief literature review.
• Methods: description of how the study procedures, set-up and how data was collected.
• Results/Findings: presentation of the data from the study; this section often includes tables, charts, or other visualizations of the data.
• Discussion: analysis of the data and how the study relates to existing knowledge of the topic; the authors evaluate whether their results answer their research question. 
• Conclusion: the authors wrap up the article by discussion how their study contributes to the research on this topic and outline future  potential research questions or studies. 
• References: list of resources that the authors consulted when developing their research and subsequently cited in their article.

Because scholarly articles are much longer than other types of articles, it's important that you learn a strategy for determining if an article is relevant to your research before you commit to reading it in full. 

Watch the Video

The following video shares a strategy for how to initially approach reading a scholarly article. 

"How to Quickly Scan & Evaluate a Scholarly Article" (3:12) by QVCC Library is  licensed under CC BY 3.0