Top five tips for understanding a scholarly article:

1. Look at the subject terms/headings "tagged" on each article to identify the main ideas of the article before you even read it!
2. Read the Abstract or Summary first to ensure relevance.
3. Jump around the article- Abstract, Methods, Results, Discussion... you won't spoil the ending! If these sections are helpful to you, then read it more closely start to finish. (See video below for more on this reading strategy.)
4. Take notes and look up words you don't know.
5. After reading the article and reviewing your notes, write down a 200-ish word summary in your own words- don't use quotations from the article! Ask yourself: What did they study? How did they study it? What did they find?

Bonus tip:

Use the references or works cited to find other sources related to your topic!

Before the article is published, experts in the field review the manuscript. Learn more by watching North Carolina State University Libraries' "Peer Review in 3 Minutes" video.

Steps of peer review:

1. Researcher(s) prepare an article (after months or years of research and writing)

2. Article is submitted to a journal

3. The editor(s) can reject or accept the article

4. If accepted, it goes into the peer review process, where usually 2 or more other researchers in the field review the work

5. The reviewers send feedback to the editor

6. The editor decides to accept the paper as is, reject the paper, or accept the paper with major or minor revisions

7. If revisions are needed, the editor shares the feedback with the authors and they re-work their paper

8. A second peer review process may be necessary if major revisions were required

Keywords are the terms you use to search for sources on a topic.

Determine keywords by identifying the most important terms in your research question or topic. For example:

How and what do primates remember?

The keywords here would be primates and remember. Tip: Use nouns if you can!

Consider related terms or synonyms too- in this example, memory is probably a better keyword to use than "remember".

The links below have more tips on identifying keywords for your research. If you get stuck please ask a librarian for help!

The 2 minute video below reviews how abstracts can be used in your research and how to find them in OneSearch.