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Mary DeJong, M.L.S. mary.dejong@nau.edu
In Lesson 1 you learned that scientists and applied scientists develop new research projects by building upon previously-published facts and discoveries. And, for this process to work properly, information must be publicly recorded and stored in sources. Without this documentation and storage system, we'd end up repeating the same research projects over and over again, because we'd have no record of what research had already been conducted and what we'd learned from it. It's publishers who take on the role of publicly recording information by publishing journals and conference proceedings where researchers can report on their latest findings.
While journals provide a place for researchers to record and share their research findings in the form of an article, not all articles are alike. In fact, journal articles fall into two main types: research articles and review articles. In this lesson, you'll learn about research articles. However, to properly understand these types of articles, you must first understand what journals are! So, you may need to review the section on journals in Lesson 2 of the Information Literacy Basics Tutorial before you proceed.
The function of a research article
The function of a research article
The function of a research article is to describe a research project that's been conducted and to communicate the results and findings of that project for posterity. So, any journal article that reports on new findings or discoveries resulting from a research project is a research article. Note that a research article usually reports on the results from a single research study that was conducted. A review article (which you'll learn about shortly) is different; it provides a summary of findings from multiple, related research studies.
Since research articles are one of two main sources (the other being conference papers) where new research discoveries and applications are documented and shared, they are a very important source for scientists and applied scientists. In your future career, you'll find plenty of reasons to regularly seek out and refer to research articles. As mentioned in Lesson 1 of this tutorial, you'll need to refer to sources like research articles in order to keep yourself educated and up-to-date.
Also, if you ever embark on any type of research, you'll need to consult research articles in order to understand which research projects have – or have not – already been conducted. Referring to previously published research articles will help you set a starting point for embarking on your research project.
Research articles can also provide you with ideas for methods, equipment, and techniques to apply to your own projects. And, since research articles formally document who is working on what, they'll also help you identify potential collaborators or experts to consult.
Different ways people refer to research articles
Different ways people refer to research articles
Before delving into the characteristics of research articles, let's talk about the different ways people refer to them. Sometimes you'll hear them called primary articles or primary research articles or original articles. That's because in science and applied science disciplines, research articles have qualities that make them original, primary sources. (More on that in a moment.) You might also hear them called empirical articles. That's because the research described in these types of articles was conducted using observation or experimentation. Then data was collected and analyzed to draw conclusions. That's empirical research!
Since research articles make up the bulk of all journal articles, you'll also hear people refer to them simply as journal articles, even though they're actually a specific type of journal article. So, if a college instructor were to say to you "Go find some journal articles on that topic" they probably mean: "Go find some research articles on that topic."
Also, keep in mind that journal articles are sometimes called papers or studies. When you hear these terms, the person using them is usually referring specifically to research articles.
Suppose you are looking at the table of contents of a journal issue. Which items in that table of contents are research articles? In this example table of contents from The New England Journal of Medicine, research articles appear under the heading Original Articles. However, in other journals they might be listed in the table of contents under headings like Research Articles or just Articles – or there may be no heading at all.
Take a moment to notice that this table of contents from The New England Journal of Medicine includes content other than just research articles, as you can see from the sections on Perspectives, Review articles, Case Records, and Editorials. Many journals contain a mix of content like this.
The structure of a research article
The structure of a research article
Most research articles are laid out following an established structure, and this structure serves two main purposes:
The structure ensures that researchers will document the methods they used, and present the data that resulted from their research project, as well as provide a discussion about what they learned from the data they gathered.
The structure allows readers to skip around and read the sections that interest them the most.
Below you see a much-simplified (and phony) example of a research article, showing its structure. To the right you see an explanation of all those structural elements.
Adapted from: From How to Read a Scientific Paper by Michael Fosmire of Purdue University. CC BY-NC-SA https://www.lib.purdue.edu/sites/default/files/libraries/engr/Tutorials/Newest%20Scientific%20Paper.pdf
Title - Article titles usually provide a very concise overview of what the article is about.
Abstract - This is a short summary of the entire research project.
Introduction - In this section the authors explain what research they set out to conduct and why.
Methods - Here the authors will describe how they conducted their research project.
Results - The authors use this section to display and analyze the data they collected, often using graphs, figures, or tables.
Discussion - In this section, the authors explain what they learned from their study, including the significance of it, and how it advances our knowledge of the world.
References - This is where the authors list citations to the publications they referred to throughout their article.
To the right you see the first page of an actual article (and if you want to look at it more closely, there is a link to download it here). Notice that the first page shows the first three elements of a typical article's structure:
Title
Abstract
Introduction
On the pages that follow you'd find sections describing the Methods, Results, Discussion, and References.
This organizational structure is sometimes referred to as the IMRaD structure – which stands for Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. While this is the most commonly used organizational structure for research articles, it's not the only structure used. For instance, in some research articles you might find these sections in a different order, while other research articles might add a 'conclusion' section after the 'discussion.' You may encounter other structural differences as well, especially in research articles published in disciplines like engineering and computer science.
Strategies for reading research articles
Strategies for reading research articles
The structure of a research article allows readers to skip around and read the sections that interest them the most, as you can see from the table to the right. This is extremely useful since reading a research article from start to finish is a time commitment and most researchers are looking for ways to save time!
It's common for researchers to read certain parts of an article first in order to determine whether it's worth their time to read the article in its entirety. Typically, they'd first look at the article title to determine whether the article sounded useful for their needs. If so, they'd probably go on to read the abstract. If the article still sounded relevant after that, they might jump to the discussion to read what the authors learned from their research project. Or they might skip to the methods section to see what materials and techniques the authors used.
So, now you know that it's common for researchers to read certain parts of an article first, in order to determine whether it is worth their time to read the article in its entirety. Even if they decide to read the entire article, they might not read the article's sections in order.
Something else to note when reading a journal article is that certain sections have their own internal structure. For example, the Introduction section usually starts off broadly with the authors discussing what motivated them to undertake their research project. After that, the authors review the knowledge they gained from existing sources and show how those sources provide background and context for their research project (this part of the introduction is called a literature review, by the way). Then, the authors get even more specific and explain the precise research project they undertook. So, typically introductions are like a funnel going from general to specific.
Research articles are primary sources
Research articles are primary sources
You had a brief introduction to primary and secondary sources in the Information Literacy Basics tutorial, and now would be a good time to review that information! But, just as a refresher, a primary source is a type of source that reports on brand-new findings or discoveries. So, a source is given the label primary if it records information that was 'just born' – that is, information that's brand new, original, and didn't exist in any other form before. In science and applied science disciplines, primary sources usually communicate details about a research project. Typically, the person (or people) who conducted the research project are the authors of the source, which means that the source is a first-hand account of what the authors researched and learned.
In other words, primary sources contain brand-new research findings documented first-hand by the authors. So research articles fit all the requirements for being a primary source! But they are not the only type of primary source. Other examples of primary sources include conference papers, dissertations, theses, data, technical reports, and patents, since all of them present brand-new research results written first-hand by the author (or creator or inventor).
Let's look at an example of how primary sources are different from secondary sources. Suppose a friend told you they'd heard on the news that jumping on a trampoline when you are over age 50 increases your chances of breaking a leg by 35%. That friend is a secondary source of information. The journalist that reported the news is also a secondary source of information. That's because neither your friend nor the journalist conducted the study, so both of them are reporting on it second-hand.
The primary source would be the published research article that describes the study and its results. In the study, researchers had a group of people who were over 50 jump on trampolines to see how many legs they'd break, compared to a control group of over-50-year-olds who didn't jump on trampolines. When the results were gathered, a research article was written and published. So, the first time that information was disseminated to others was in the form of a research article, making that research article the primary source.*
*This research article doesn't actually exist, it's just a silly example to illustrate a point.
For your reference, here's a list of typical primary sources in science and applied science disciplines:
Research articles
Conference papers
Dissertations
Theses
Data
Patents
Research articles vary in their study designs
Research articles vary in their study designs
A study design is a way to categorize research articles by the particular methodology the authors used to conduct their research. For example, research articles can be categorized by the type of data collected, as well as how data was analyzed. On the broadest level, we categorize research articles by whether the study design captures quantitative data or qualitative data.
Quantitative studies involve collecting and analyzing numerical (quantifiable) data in the form of measurements, statistics, percentages, scores, etc. to conduct the sort of deductive, experimental research that's commonly associated with the scientific method. Quantitative research methods are used across the sciences, social sciences, and applied sciences.
Qualitative studies involve collecting non-numerical data in the form of interviews, surveys, focus groups, etc. in order to understand human experiences and behaviors. These methods are more commonly used in the social sciences, but not exclusively. Below is an example of a qualitative study:
Both quantitative and qualitative research study designs can be broken down into a variety of sub-types of study designs as you see below.
However, not all science and applied science disciplines make an effort to categorize research into particular types of study designs. Rather, it's primarily research disciplines that involve humans – such as health sciences, psychology, and sociology – where it's especially useful to categorize research articles by study design. Why is that?
One reason is that we use a wide variety of research methods for studying humans, and some of this methods simply are not applicable in other disciplines. Also, the stakes are high to interpret studies on humans correctly, and labeling research articles by study design helps us understand how to react to the results and findings of the study. For example, study designs clue us in to whether the study and its results are exploratory, preliminary, or more conclusive. Obviously if you are trying to establish best practices or policies, you'll want to gather information from research articles with the most robust and conclusive study designs, rather than from those using less-robust and/or exploratory study designs.
Study designs are also important for helping us get at answers to questions in different ways. For example, if you want to find out what treatments work best for curing a disease, then randomized controlled trials (also known by the abbreviation RCTs) are an excellent study design to get at this information. In a randomized controlled trial that studies the efficacy of a treatment or therapy, human subjects would be given the therapy and then compared to another set of human subjects who were not given that therapy, in order to determine how effective the therapy was. In this type of study design, human subjects are randomly assigned to test the therapy and neither the subjects nor the researchers know who is getting the therapy and who isn't. This reduces bias and placebo-effects and provides more conclusive results. So, any research conducted using an RCT study design leads to particularly robust, conclusive results compared to some other types of study designs. Here's a typical research article that employs an RCT study design:
- Gunst, J. D., et al. (2021). Efficacy of the TMPRSS2 inhibitor camostat mesilate in patients hospitalized with Covid-19-a double-blind randomized controlled trial. EClinicalMedicine, 35, 100849.
You might be wondering "Why bother to use study designs other than RCTs if RCTs tend to lead to more conclusive results?" The answer is that it takes lots of preliminary, exploratory studies to build up to designing and conducting an RCT. Not only that, there are lots of things researchers want to learn for which an RCT would not be the most appropriate study design. For example, if you were trying to learn about people's mental health issues over time, then a longitudinal study would be a good choice of study design, like you see in this research article:
- Breslau, J., et al. (2021). A longitudinal study of psychological distress in the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Preventive medicine, 143, 106362.
So, different study designs are geared to help us learn different things.
Some studies combine both quantitative and qualitative research methods, and these are considered Mixed Method Study Designs.
How to learn more about study designs
How to learn more about study designs
If you want to learn more about a particular type of study design, you can often find good information with a Google search.
Or, to find out more about research methods and study designs in your discipline, search Cline library for relevant books on that topic! Just go to Cline Library's home page, select the Quick Search dropdown to search Books & Media, then enter your search terms and search, like you see below:
You are finished with Lesson 2. What's next?
You are finished with Lesson 2. What's next?
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