How to read a research paper

Each of these research publications has undergone a process called peer review, where fellow experts consider whether the quality of the work and the relevance and interest of results are worthy of publication in a scientific journal.

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Each paper has an abstract, which is a summary typically structured to cover:

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• Introduction – why the work was done

• Methods – how the work was done

• Results – what was found

• Discussion/conclusions – what it means.​

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An abstract will be a few hundred words long, a paper about 3000 words, so much of the interesting information is in the full paper. The paper also includes references providing the source of any facts reported.

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If a paper is open access, anyone can read the full paper from the publisher’s website. If it’s not open access, there may be a charge, which might be prepaid by an institution. If you don’t want to pay personally, check Scholar or university websites where some papers may be provided in full.