Tips to reading science papers

This page is about reading. For notes on writing an original lab report about an experiment or project in your biology class, see Checklist — Lab report write-up.

Science papers have a reputation for being challenging to read and understand. Some of this stems from the fact that few scientists are genuinely adept at writing well. However, the challenge also is based on the work itself. Readers of science articles are expected to know something about the subject prior to starting the article. To those outside the field, or to those just starting a science carrier, it’s the heavy reliance on jargon terms by the writer that presents the barrier to understanding. This barrier is not easily overcome, and a key element of success in reading science articles is to recognize that you, the reader, have work to do: you must learn the words and you must recognize what the scientific purpose of the article is about. With these elements in place — vocabulary and scientific purpose — all that’s left is selecting the area of science that interests you.

A quick internet search will return many works suggesting how best to read scientific papers. A nice example is by Dr Jennifer Raff, How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists.

A reminder, do not use AI.

The objective of our reading assignments is to help you learn about and practice the work. Your assignment may call for a reading summary or a reading reflection (discussed below). Remember, the assignment is about you, your learning, your understanding, your critical analysis. Therefore, avoid any use of generative AI — specifically the large language models like ChatGPT — to generate a summary of the science paper. As science educators and students of science, we are all in the beginnings of how best to utilize and engage with this (potentially) useful technology. What is clear is that the use of AI to shorten tasks like reading an article for comprehension interferes with learning (Ahmed et al 2023, Zhai et al 2024). Each assignment will likely include specific questions: don’t do a narrative — answer the questions in short paragraphs, typically three to four sentences will be sufficient. While these papers can be long, the questions are written so that reading the abstract first, followed by a focused reading of the Results, Methods, Introduction and Discussion is likely enough. The papers were selected because they go with the material we are currently working though in your course, so be mindful of the topics discussed in class.

The papers were selected because they go with the material we are currently working though in your Biology course. Do not use AI to generate summaries of the reading material. Per Chaminade University Biology course syllabuses, use of generative AI, without consent of the instructor, is considered to violate academic honesty. Use of AI to summarize a science paper defeats the whole purpose of asking students to work through the paper. To summarize: the learning objectives for having students read scientific papers helps develop important professional skills and helps distinguish between important information from minor details.

Tips to reading

  1. Decide what type of article: primary, secondary, tertiary
  2. Make note and be aware of the purpose of the assignment. The assignment will ask for either a summary or a reflection. These are not the same tasks.
    • A reading summary assignment requires students to address, in order, what was done, how it was done, what was found and why it matters, while avoiding a detailed repetition of the entire paper. Additionally, students should “…write about the article, not about the actual topic of the article.” See Writing Article Summaries, Academic Skills, Trent University.
    • A reading reflection assignment requires the student to “critically engage with concepts from your course by making connections between your observations, experiences, and opinions…” to the “…ideas presented in the text and to consider how they affect your interpretation.”  See How to Write a Reflection Paper, Academic Skills, Trent University.
  3. Have a list of questions in mind as you begin to read: the basic questions include who, what, why, and how. Focused questions will generally be included in your Reading assignments.
  4. Read the abstract.
  5. Skim-read a research article
    • Begin by reading the title, each sub-heading, then read figure legends and examine the figures.
    • Focus effort on, in order, the Introduction, Results, Discussion, and the methods — to address what was found and the approaches (how) used to test the hypothesis.
  6. Go back to the beginning of the article and snail-read.
    • Start with the introduction, jump to the conclusion, then follow the article’s outline.
  7. Identify the main question the paper asks and identify the answer(s) provided by the author to the question
  8. Identify evidence provided to support the author’s conclusions
  9. Write down each word you don’t understand and provide definitions — in order to understand the science, you must understand the vocabulary.
    • Wikipedia may get you started with definitions
    • You may also find it helpful to search TED talks for subjects raised in the article
  10. Jot down notes as you scan-read and snail-read that help you answer your list of questions.

Types of science writing

Primary literature:

This work includes original research, either results from an experiment, a description of a specific case, or presentation of new methods or critiques of theory. Primary literature is reported in science journals by the originators of the research. Papers for publication are selected by editors (interesting? appropriate for the journal?), then subjected to anonymous peer review. If the papers pass peer review, the articles are revised and published. Science journals are not all equal; one way to judge the reputation of a journal is to identify the journal’s impact: a score that includes how often articles from the journal are cited by others.

Secondary literature:

These include edited books and review articles. Review articles, like primary literature, also are commonly reported in journals and are subject to peer evaluation. The distinction between primary and secondary is the originality of the source of the paper. There are two kinds of review articles in science: the review and the systematic review. A review paper is often the work of an expert in the field and its purpose is to express a point of view. While many references may be cited in the review paper, the collection of references is at the discretion of the author. In contrast, a systematic review provides an overview of the field and the decision criteria for reference inclusion is spelled out. A met-analysis is an extension of a systematic review about a hypothesis (e.g., does hormone replacement therapy reduce bone fractures [Torgerson and Bell-Syer 2001]), and may be considered as primary work. Although the sources of data for a meta-analysis are from the works of others, the specific inclusion of many studies of related works and subsequent statistical analysis provides a new test of the hypothesis. Reviews longer than a typical article may appear as books published for the science community, and whose intended audience may range from the general science enthusiast to other experts in the same field as the author.

Tertiary literature:

These include introductory textbooks like Becker’s world of the cell, which is more like an encyclopedia than a
Main argument: The crucial idea or claim that connects the many different parts of the paper into a coherent piece of writing. From Collins Dictionary: An argument is a statement or set of statements that you use in order to try to convince people that your opinion about something is correct.

Works cited

Ahmad, S. F., Han, H., Alam, M. M., Rehmat, M. K., Irshad, M., Arraño-Muñoz, M., & Ariza-Montes, A. (2023). Impact of artificial intelligence on human loss in decision making, laziness and safety in education. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1), 311.

Torgerson, D. J., & Bell-Syer, S. E. (2001). Hormone replacement therapy and prevention of nonvertebral fractures: a meta-analysis of randomized trials. Jama, 285(22), 2891-2897.

Zhai, C., Wibowo, S., & Li, L. D. (2024). The effects of over-reliance on AI dialogue systems on students’ cognitive abilities: A systematic review. Smart Learning Environments, 11(1), 28.