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.

In less than 5 minutes, learn how to:

• Get help from a librarian
• Conduct a basic search in our main database, OneSearch (includes how to limit to scholarly articles, find a citation, and email yourself sources)
• Locate subject-specific sources **These are now called "Subject Guides", not "libguides" as mentioned in the video.**

Sometimes you need to specify how you'd like a database to search your terms. The handout below describes in more detail four different advanced searching techniques you might want to try:

• Subject Terms- Limit your searches by focusing on the content of the article rather than the terms used by the authors. Pre-defined list of terms unique to each database. In OneSearch, use "Advanced Search" and limit to "SU Subject Terms."
• Phrase Searching- Keep words together in a specific order by adding quotation marks around them, i.e. "social media," "climate change," "mental health," etc.
• Wildcard / Truncation- Use the asterisk * at the end of a root word to search other variations of that word, i.e. child* searches child, children, childhood, etc.
• Boolean Operators- Use AND, OR, NOT to focus your search.
  • AND - limits the search by requiring all terms to be present
  • OR - expands the search by looking for either term
  • NOT - eliminates one term entirely from the search, including overlap with other terms you want

Watch the video below to see these strategies in action in the library's OneSearch, or use the handouts to get more detailed steps and practice these tools.

Please contact a librarian if you have any questions or would like advice on crafting a search for your topic!