We’re all supposed to read scientific and peer reviewed literature on a regular basis… so they say. But nearly all grad students find reading journal articles to be a difficult and exhausting chore.
How often, how many articles, and how in-depth you need to read them will depend on your changing research needs and goals throughout grad school. But journal articles are not written like common literature, and different grad students have different strategies for digesting them. Here are a few different tips from grad students about reading peer reviewed journal articles:
- Read the article all the way through, just like a book or other material.
- Only read the parts/portions of specific interest/need.
- Read the intro first to get an overview of the topic, then skip to the conclusions section to learn where the article is headed in the end. With these facts in mind, the technical details of the article’s other sections may make more sense.
- Don’t worry about understanding 100% of the material. Force yourself to finish the article in a timely manner. Over time, your speed and comprehension will improve.
Broad, general interest material
While much of the scientific literature is highly discipline-specific, there are some topics that are (or should be) of broader interest to many scientists. Here are a few such articles that were submitted:
- Example of the fact that “entropy” does not mean “disorder”
- Problem of (the lack of) reproducibility in modern science
Do you know of other broad-interest materials that could also be linked on this page? Send them to us at: trr007@uark.edu