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The Research Process & Your Unique Workflow

An introduction to the general practices of research and some tools to help as you work.

Read to Prune

After you've collected your initial set of sources, the next step is to read briefly with the intent of deciding whether to keep them in your final list or whether they should be pruned and removed from your collection.

You don't need to read everything you found if what you found doesn't fit the question you're trying to answer.

 

SCANNING

When you've determined the list of sources you know you must read, then comes the deeper reading and annotating so you can start to process what these works are telling you.

 

ANNOTATING

How to Read a Scholarly Article

An article summarizing the results of a research study is trying to both explain the study as well as the reason the study was conducted. The specific structure of a scientific scholarly article may vary slightly between disciplines and journals, but the overall format is basically the same.

 

The sections of a scholarly article can be thought to answer the questions posed below:

Paper Section

What It Means
Abstract What did I do in a nutshell?
Introduction What is the problem?
Literature Review (might be part of the introduction or a separate section) How have others worked on this problem?
Materials and/or Methods How did I solve the problem?
Results or Findings What did I find out?
Discussion and/or Conclusions What does it mean?
Acknowledgments (when applicable) Who helped me out?
Works Cited/References/Bibliography Whose work did I refer to?
Appendices (when applicable) Extra Information

Table adapted from How to Write a Paper in Scientific Journal Style and Format (Bates College).

How to Read a Work of Theory