Scientific articles come in different types, including primary research articles, review articles, and popular press/background articles. Primary research articles describe original experiments and are structured like a lab report, with introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections. Review articles summarize and synthesize previous research on a topic. Popular press articles are written for a general audience to provide accessible background information on scientific topics. Scholarly articles are the main way research findings are communicated among scientists.

1. Scientific Literature
The Types of Articles

2. Thousands of scientific articles are published in
scholarly, peer-reviewed journals every year.

3. Popular publications like magazines and newspapers also
publish a vast amount of material on scientific topics.

4. But there is a big difference between a magazine
article and a scholarly one.

5. And not even all scholarly articles are the same

6. This presentation will walk you through the basics
of the types of scholarly and popular press articles
and unlock their mysteries.

7. In scientific research, scholarly journal articles are the
primary way research is communicated and spread.

8. Because these journals are not widely available outside
academic institutions, you may have never seen a scholarly
article so first we will discuss two basic types.

9. Type 1:
The Primary
Research Article

10. The primary research article is the most basic means by
which scientists report the results of their research.

11. A primary research articles begins when a single researcher
(or more often a group of them) perform an experiment.

12. When you do an experiment in lab class you are often
assigned a lab report with an Introduction, Materials and
Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions sections.

13. Research articles are based on this same structure.

14. Let's take a look at some of the major parts of a
research article

15. The article starts with some basic information including
the Article's title, author's names and affiliations.

16. The publication date information shows that this article
passed through a peer review process.

17. After the publication information you'll see a short
summary of the article called an abstract.

18. Abstracts are provided so you can quickly see if an
article contains information you are interested in.

19. The text of the article begins with an introduction which discusses
previous work on the subject and gives a brief overview.

20. In most articles this will be followed by a methods section.

21. And then results.

22. The results section generally contains a number of charts, graphs,
or tables to express the data discussed.

23. The discussion section may also contain more graphs
as it puts the results into a broader context with
information from other research.

24. An article's text often ends with acknowledgements and thanks
from the authors for assistance or funding for the research.

25. And finally the article's bibliography, citing all of the other
research discussed in the article.

26. This list of references is a valuable place to look for
other articles that you may find useful.

27. Type 2:
The Review Article

28. Review articles are also scholarly and subject to peer
review but they differ from primary research in their
content.

29. Rather than a lab report, a Review article is similar to a
research paper like you have written for school.

30. Researchers gather together many primary review articles
on a topic and summarize them into a review article.

31. The review article starts with the same publication details
and abstract that you would find in a research article...

32. ...but unlike a research article the entire text of a review
article is a discussion of the research done of the topic
with new or original research being presented.

33. These articles allow you to review a lot of primary
research in a short time and identify which of the
research articles you will find valuable.

34. Because so much material is covered, the list of
references at the end of a review article is
generally much more extensive than that of a
research article, often running several pages.

35. And to get the most out of a review article you'll
need to be able to follow and read the citations to
each research article in the references section.

36. Citations come in two basic formats
depending on the article:
parenthetical and numbered.

37. With a parenthetical citation you look for the author's
name (or occasionally title) in the list of references,
which are generally listed alphabetically.

38. With a numeric citation you refer to the footnote
number in the references list at the end.

39. In either case, the result will be a citation to another
article, which you will need to decipher so you can find
the article in question.

40. Most citations will contain these basic pieces of
information that you would need to locate an article.

41. Although different journals will have slightly different
formats, the same basic information will still be present
and should be identifiable.

42. Often a journal name will be abbreviated; you can do a web
search for an abbreviation to get the journal's full title.

43. With the citation you can use the Journal Finder page on
the Library's Website to find or order the full article.

44. Popular Press or
Background Articles

45. In addition to scholarly articles, your project will ask you to
use background articles to gather information.

46. Popular Press or background articles are those that come
from non-scholarly sources like magazines and newspapers.

47. These articles are generally written by
journalists rather than scientists.

48. And they are written to be read by the general public,
rather than students or other researchers

49. This means that background articles will often describe
the topic in a way that is much easier to understand…

50. …and contain important basic information that would be
considered too simple to put in a scholarly article.

51. Just like scholarly articles, your librarian will
show you how to find background articles when
you come to the library lab next week.