How to Read a Journal Article – Transcript (Andy Ross)
Hi guys. Welcome to this short video about
How to Read an Academic Journal Article, which is an important skill in university study
and one that you’ll need to do numerous times during your studies.
So, what this video will do is answer these
three questions. First of all, what is a journal article? What is a typical structure of an
academic journal article? And what are some basic strategies for reading a journal article?
So, first of all, what is a scholarly journal
article? First of all, an academic journal article
should present original research which is current and relevant in the field.
It is generally discipline-specific which means there are journal article specific to
the field of nursing, the field of education, the field of accounting, the field of tourism
and so on. Academic journal articles are also peer-reviewed
which means before they are published the article is reviewed by two or three other
experts in the field and they determine whether the research is relevant, important enough
and whether the article is written in the appropriate academic style.
Journal articles always follow academic writing conventions which includes academic language
and referencing. And also, to read a journal article effectively
the reader generally needs some kind of background knowledge in that area. For example, if I
were to go and read a journal article from the field of dentistry, if I’ve never done
any study about dentistry before it would be very hard for me to understand what that
article is about.
Most journal article have a typical structure. They vary in some ways depending on the type
of journal that you read or journal article that you read, but a typical structure is
this one presented here. First of all the Abstract is at the beginning
which gives a summary of the overall article. The Introduction gives a general introduction
of course. A Literature Review will summarise previous
relevant research and identify a research ‘gap’.
The Method shows how the research was conducted. The Results, significant findings.
The Discussion, and interpretation of those findings in relation to data and literature.
A Conclusion, which will generally summarise main findings, present some implications and
limitations as well as future research directions. Then there’s the references.
Now to read an academic journal article there
are some general strategies that we can advise. So, if you want to know the general picture
of the whole article, you should read the Abstract or skim the sub-headings if there
are some in the article. If you want to know some background on the
topic, read the Introduction. If you want to know the rationale for the
study or any previous related research, the Literature Review is the part that you could
read. If you want to know how the research was conducted,
go to the Method. If you want to know the main findings, go
to the Results. If you want to know the significance of those
findings, go to the Discussion. For future research possibilities, or of you
want to know limitations in the research – the
And the reference list of course at the end will give the details of all the research
that was cited. So these are some general strategies but on
top of these you can also … you should also keep in mind that with a journal article it’s
not always necessary to read every section. You might just be looking at different journal
articles to see how the research was conducted in each of those studies. In that case, the
most important part for you is the Method. So, keep in mind what your purpose in reading
the article is as that will guide the way that you read it and the strategies that you
can use. And finally, unlike most other things that
we read, it’s not always necessary to read a journal article in order. Often we read
the abstract first, then we might want to know immediately what the results of the study
were, so we would go to the Results and if they want to know what they mean we go to
the discussion. So, your purpose in reading will determine
the strategy you use and the order in which you read the article.
Now, we’re going to have a look at an example article now to see some of these strategies
in practice.
Example article So keeping in mind the strategies just outlined,
let’s look at an example of a journal article. This one’s called ‘Why Restaurants Fail?
The Relationship between Restaurant Failures and Demographic Factors’.
This article roughly follows a typical structure as we just outlined, but not exactly in terms
of the headings but this is something you’ll often find. There’s not always an exact
match in headings, but the general structure remains the same.
For example, there’s no specific Introduction section, but you can clearly see some language
used in the first paragraph that indicates it is an Introduction as it shows the purpose
of the study and it talks about ‘this study will build on’, ‘our purpose was to study’,
and so on. This type of language gives us an idea that it is actually an Introduction
to the article. There’s also, here, not a separate Literature
Review heading, but we can begin to see that previous relevant literature is being discussed.
Examples of this can be seen in the highlighted sections here – ‘Crutzen (2008) distinguished
a small business’ and ‘Similar to Peterson, Albaum, and Kozmetsky’s (1986) consumers’.
These are examples of previous literature being reviewed.
Now, if we move on, you can note some sub-headings and these guide your reading when they appear
in an article and will help you see the different areas in which literature is being reviewed.
Now, the Literature Review will generally help identify a ‘gap’ in the research,
and this will be the guide of the current study and it is usually identified in research
questions and here you can see eight research questions highlighted.
Often these appear as part of the Method section but in other cases they can appear, like in
this case, at the end of the Literature Review. So, just highlighting again that not every
journal article is the same, but they sort of stick to a typical general structure and
this one does that as well. So, there’s the research questions. Then,
we see the Method which is where we learn how the research was conducted. You can see
the highlighted sections here point out details about the data and participants and as you
can see ‘our data were obtained from two sources’, ‘with a relatively small population’,
so that’s about participants, and then at the end of that section ‘the categorical
data were recoded and analyzed using SAS software’. So this is the kind of information that you
would generally see in a Method section. The Results section is next, and this is often
separate from the Discussion section but, again, not always and in this case the Results
and Discussion can be seen as being presented together.
You can see the Results are presented in tables, and the highlighted sections … the highlighted
sections show the language often used in introducing different results using words such as ‘found’,
‘revealed’, ‘an explanation’, ‘indicated’, and so on.
Now, then we come to the Conclusion. So, I’m just skipping through quickly that part of
the Results and Discussion because it’s quite long but the highlighted parts will
give you the idea. Then we come to the Conclusion, and you can see that the first part of this
Conclusion kind of summarises what has been done in the article.
Then, some of the limitations of the study are pointed out, and finally some suggestions
for future research directions are pointed out as well.
Now, of course in all academic or all scholarly journal articles the reference list is the
last part, so you can see that there. All journals will have different referencing styles
not only APA and Harvard but other styles as well.
And that is basically a brief overview of how to approach reading an academic journal
article in your study, which you will have to do a lot of.
So, if you have any further questions about any of these strategies or if you have an
article you are struggling reading, please don’t hesitate to make an appointment with
Academic Skills and we’d be happy to help you out with that.
But in the meantime, good luck with your reading and good luck with your studies.