Tips for Reading Scientific Articles
- Quick Tutorial on Reading Scientific Papers - PurdueThis tutorial will quickly and easily walk you through how to read a scientific article and the anatomy of a scientific article.
- Infographic: How to read a Scientific PaperTips for reading and understanding research papers.
- How to read a Scientific Article -- University of ArizonaHelps you understand how a scientific paper is organized, what difficulties to expect, and how to prepare before you start reading.
- Video Tutorial -- How to read a scientifc articleThis YouTube video gives you details on skimming articles to determine if they are useful and relevant before reading the whole article.
Apply Date Limits
All of your articles must be published in the past 10 years, and at least one of your articles must be published in the last 3 years.
Don't waste your time looking through articles that don't fit within that range! In each database there is an option for "Limits" and you can choose a date limit very easily.
Boolean Phrase Searching
Using the words AND, OR, NOT while you search will retrieve preferred results. Each of those three words serve a different purpose.
- AND–Narrows your search (Use between your concepts)
- OR–Broadens your search (Use between synonyms)
- NOT–Tells the search engine to only return results without this word
For example, let's say you need to find an article about dragonfly migration. You would definitely include dragonfly AND migration in your search. But what other word could bring you articles on dragonflies? Odonata! And what other word mean migration? Movement!
Therefore, your search phrase could be:
(Dragonfly OR Odonata) AND (Migration OR Movement)