Efficiently reading scientific articles

Staying up-to-date in the literature is essential for being a successful researcher. First, it helps you be familiar with the trends in the field and identify relevant research questions that can further advance the field. Second, reading often can familiarize you with the latest technologies and methodologies that you can use in your own research. Lastly, discussing these valuable points in your article can help you establish credibility and build your reputation. Although most researchers know this, they have one common complaint — limited time!

Therefore, it is useful to implement strategies to allow yourself to stay up-to-date without sacrificing valuable time. This article will cover two strategies that will help you to achieve this goal: searching strategies and reading strategies.

Searching Strategies

Let’s first discuss searching strategies. How do you normally find articles related to your research topic?

If you are like most researchers, you rely on indexing databases like Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, or Google Scholar. These are excellent resources to find the latest developments in your field. But it is also useful to know the differences among these as well to help you more selectively determine which articles are most useful. They generally fall into two broad categories depending if the journals had to apply for inclusion or not.

?Selective databases

The first group of databases comprises Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, Ei Compendex, and others. These databases require journals to apply to be included in their database. And they are selective! Scopus generally will only accept about 25–30% of journals after a thorough evaluation of the editorial quality and content of the journal. PubMed, via Medline, only includes 12–15% of the journals that apply. Lastly, the Web of Science is even more selective and only includes the top 10%. That means, if you find an article in a journal that is indexed by all three databases, that means that the journal had gone through three independent external evaluations, all of which thought it was a high-quality journal. That can make you feel more confident about the quality of the content they publish.

Non-selective databases

Google Scholar, being freely accessible, is probably the most commonly used database across disciplines worldwide. Unlike the big three discussed above, Google Scholar does not require journals to apply for inclusion. If it is online and academic in content, it will likely be discoverable by Google Scholar. That means, however, you have to be more careful in evaluating what you find. Are you familiar with the journal that the article is published in? If not, you may want to scrutinize the data more carefully as you cannot assume it was thoroughly peer-reviewed (although we hope that it was!). One benefit of Google Scholar, however, is that it will find content in newer journals (many newer journals will not be discoverable in Scopus, PubMed, or Web of Science until after a few years of publication) as well as books, conferences and other sources of potentially useful scholarly content.

My recommendation? Never use just one database to stay up-to-date. Use at least one moderated database like Scopus or Web of Science (and consider a specialized database like PubMed or Ei Compendex) and also use Google Scholar for its breadth across scholarly content.

Another useful tip is that you only need to search with your keywords once. Why do you ask? Once you have conducted a keyword search in the above databases, you can then save the search and create an alert. By doing this, whenever the database indexes new articles related to your keyword search, they will simply send you an email to highlight those new articles. In this way, you don’t have to waste time constantly going online to find the articles you’re looking for; instead, have the databases send them to you. All you have to do, then, is read your emails to stay up-to-date in your field.

Using these search strategies will simplify and improve your discovery of new content related to your topic of interest. I recommend then to spend about 20-30 minutes a day reading through the abstracts being sent to your email — enjoyed best when accompanied by a cup of coffee, in my opinion — and then identify those articles that you want to read in full.

Reading Strategies

This brings us to the second strategy to help you build your expertise, reading strategies. Because time is limited and you are very busy, you likely don’t have time to read every article from start to finish. Luckily, you don’t need to. Articles are structured in such a way that you can find the information you are looking for efficiently.

The first thing you need to do is ask yourself, “What am I looking for?” You downloaded that article for a reason. There was something you hoped to learn from that paper. What was it? By having that clear in your mind, then you now know what you are looking for in that article. Keep those keywords in mind as you go through the article so you can be sure you identify the most important content for you.

The second step is to know where the essential information is provided in the article. Luckily, articles are consistently structured to effectively guide readers through their content using IMRaD: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.

Most of the introduction is background information for context. If you are already familiar with the topic, then this may not be necessary to read. What you should look for, however, is the research problem that serves as the motivation for the study. Why did the authors decide that this study was necessary? This will usually be found towards the end of the Introduction and preceded with the keyword, ‘however’. When you see this keyword, slow down and read that next sentence carefully as this is where the author(s) will identify what motivated their study. This will help put the study’s objectives, usually stated in the last paragraph of the Introduction, into context for you.

Next, look through the figures, graphs, and tables. If you are already familiar with the methodologies used in the study, the figures will likely be familiar to you as well. Then, by reviewing the figure captions that describe what you’re looking at, you can evaluate the data the author(s) obtained. At this point, think of the data as if they are your own How would you interpret them? What would you do next? Were those additional experiments conducted? If not, why not? Perhaps this could be how you may want to build on this study in line with your professional interests.

If certain trends or relationships are not so clear to you, then look in the Results section where the author(s) describe that figure. The Results section is meant to highlight these trends more clearly to better guide the reader. Do you agree with the trends or relationships the authors describe? Were there trends you identified that were not described? Again, these could be potential leads to build upon in your own research program.

Lastly, read through the Discussion. Here, the author(s) will interpret their findings in context with what is already known. Sometimes papers will combine the results with the interpretations in a Results-Discussion section. Do you agree with the author’s interpretations? Are there other studies that you felt were relevant but not discussed? Are there limitations in the methodologies or analyses that could influence the conclusion of the study? I encourage you to feel free to contact the corresponding author of the article to discuss these questions further with them. They will appreciate your interest in their study, and at the same time, you will establish new professional networks with your colleagues worldwide. Establishing these networks is one of the best ways to improve your reputation in your field.

You need to be asking yourself the questions described above to validate the relevance and usefulness of that study for you. If you are not asking these questions while you read, what I call passively reading, you will not extract what is really important for you to build your expertise.

Until you have sufficient experience actively reading articles, I recommend you write down the above questions to help guide you more effectively. Soon, with practice, these questions will come naturally to you when reading new articles, and you will become even more efficient.

In summary, reading articles is an essential part of being a productive researcher. Because time is limited, you need to implement successful strategies to discover new articles and extract the valuable information they contain. By doing so, you will not only improve your own research programs, but you will also establish your expertise and build your reputation in the field.

Note: This article was originally published in Nature Digest (in Japanese); Robens J. Nature Digest. 2018; 15: 28-29.