Reading a Scientific Paper

Part of The Alchemist's Lair Web Site
Maintained by Harry E. Pence, Professor of Chemistry, SUNY Oneonta, for the use of his students. Any opinions are totally coincidental and have no official en endorsement, including the people who sign my pay checks. Comments and suggestions are welcome (pencehe@oneonta.edu).

Last Revised January 23, 2004

READING PRIMARY CHEMISTRY SOURCES

For many students, scientific articles combine high information density and an unusual vocabulary with an unfamiliar writing style. When you first look at a journal article, the material may appear to be overwhelming. Don't despair! Reading an article out of the field of your training may be difficult even for college faculty. Use the following questions to help you get started. Your initial goal should be to develop a simple statement describing what the researchers did. This may be all the information you need from a given article, or it may serve as a basis for more extensive study. You'll find that each time you read an article using this approach, your ability to put the material into your own words will improve.

• Start by focusing on just the abstract. Try to understand WHY the study was done. What question (or questions) is this research addressing? Identify any unfamiliar terms that you may need to look up. Remember that chemists may use terms in ways that are different from the typical usage, so it's best to use a chemical dictionary.
• What seems to be the general type of research reported? Were the authors trying to synthesize and characterize a new type of compound? Were they testing a new analytical procedure? Were they trying to confirm some prediction made previously?
• Next, skim through the methods section to determine what methods were used. These methods may well also be unfamiliar to you, so don't get bogged down trying to understand the specifics.
• Next, look at each diagram in the paper. If there are drawings of the instrumentation used, they may come in handy later on. Look especially for graphs that indicate the results of the research. You will probably want to refer back to these when you do the next step and read the conclusions section.
• Continue by going to the section titled "conclusions" (sometimes buried in the end of the discussion without a specific label). If the paper is well written, this should be the answer to the question that was stated at the beginning of the work.
• Based on what you have read so far, try to formulate a statement summarizing the research. For example, you might conclude that these scientists were attempting to determine the levels of oxidizing compounds in an urban atmosphere using multi-pass FT-IR. Now look at the title. Does it agree with your statement?
• Formulate a list of the things you need to know to understand the paper, that is, special vocabulary words, unfamiliar instrumental techniques, and any specific theories that are used to interpret the results. Not only will you need to understand this material, but in your paper you will want to make sure that you clarify these items for your audience. Remember that about 50% of your presentation should be based on this background material.
• Finally, you are ready to really dig into the paper, learning about the different methods and terminology that are used. As you do so, keep in mind the summary of the article that you have written. You may need to revise it as you understand the paper better. As you create your presentation for senior seminar, your summary should become the the organizing theme. If you find that the paper deals with several different questions, don't feel that you need to address all of them. Pick the one(s) that are most interesting to you (or that you understand best).

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