Science Papers, How to Best Read and Analyze

Research Papers, Understanding, Interpreting and Summarizing Them

Jun 8, 2009

So many papers, so little time, sums up the scientist's, doctor's, or interested layperson's dilemma regarding the scientific literature. See how to do this task well.

The scientific paper requires critical dissection to extract information. Reviewing an entire, original research paper is a challenge. A reviewer may spend only a few minutes, or several hours, analyzing one paper. Ordinary readers may spend two to six hours becoming familiar with an 5–10 page paper to enable an oral or written report.

Goals and Approaches to Critical Reviews of Scientific Papers

A typical reviewer’s goals are to:

establish the main and relevant findings.
verify that the experiments have been done correctly and
justify the findings and identify problems or questions that might remain.

Critical and focused thinking is required for all science reviews. Biological and medical texts summarize original publications as large as10–30 pages in one or two sentences. A paper of ten thousand words may be summarized in 100 words, only 1% of the original content.

Scientific Paper Review Process, Important Questions to Ask

Based on the Title, is this a relevant paper of interest? Yes or No.
How significant is this paper? High, Medium or Low?
Abstract — What are the paper's new facts or discoveries?
Materials and Methods — What was used and how was it done? What are the controls?
Results — Are the data, tables, figures, clear and supportive?
Discussion/Conclusions — What ideas and issues relate to the findings and data?
Personal summary — What is most important? What is unresolved and worthy of future questions and research?

Scientific Paper Review Requires Good, Critical Notes, Probing Questions and Solid Answers

Critical notes, probing questions, and needed clarifications are important to a good understanding of research papers. Reviewers should be alert, inquisitive and somewhat skeptical critics. Exceptional, well-done reviews may provide the basis for new, innovative approaches to the very problem being reviewed.

A copy of the paper is important for direct notations during review.

Note-taking and critical questioning are important parts of the thinking and critique process:

What is important here?
Why isn't this clear?
How can that be?
That is good, well done, clear and verified.

Functional review of each part of a scientific paper includes.

Title, highlights the main points of interest, design or findings of the research.
Abstract, summarizes many relevant research findings; always should be read before any subsequent parts of the paper
Introduction, provides a brief background of prior research, historical foundations, and it sets the stage for the current research paper; also, it provides the main theme, or hypothesis, of the paper.
Materials and Methods versus Results – What should be reviewed next? Although Materials and Methods is very important, and follows the Introduction, Results should probably be read next. Why? Because the details of the Materials and Methods can overwhelm most readers or reviewers.
Results are experiments performed and data obtained. All tables, figures and the corresponding, appropriate legends in the Results are important and provide the core, significant findings of the paper. Sometimes much of the results can be understood solely by review of the tables and figures. A reviewer is urged to read everything in Results at least two times to better understand the research paper.
Discussion next, or Materials and Methods? If the Results were understood, then reading the Discussion next is good. It may be appropriate to review Materials and Methods to make sense of the Results and the Discussion parts of a paper. Much depends upon how familiar a person is with the actual topic. Familiarity with most of the techniques used in a specialty, means that only a brief review of the Materials and Methods is needed. In other instances, a great amount of time must be spent understanding the methods, techniques, procedures and manipulations of the research in a particular paper.

Presented above are some successful ways to read a scientific paper. The more one reads and critically reviews, the better one usually becomes. Each person should determine what works best.

Sources

Moriarity, M.F. 1997. Writing Science through Critical Thinking. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Boston. 263 pp

The copyright of the article Science Papers, How to Best Read and Analyze in Scientific Inquiry is owned by Donald Reinhardt. Permission to republish Science Papers, How to Best Read and Analyze in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.