Research Starter Toolkit

Reading Scholarly Articles

Reading scholarly articles can be daunting. It's not like reading a novel or a text book. Scholarly articles are full of technical language, confusing statistics, and long discussions of other research.

Understanding how to effectively and efficiently read scholarly articles is necessary for you to be able to hone in on their main arguments so that you can incorporate them into your paper. 

Tip: If you need to review the parts of a scholarly research article, recall the Elements of a Research Article chart:

The SQ3R Method

The SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) method is a helpful approach to reading scholarly articles. Using this method will save you time and frustration as you dig into your sources. Reading with the SQ3R method will allow you to more easily identify an author's main argument or thesis. Remember, an author's research question or thesis statement will likely be explicitly stated in the introduction of the paper. 

Review the chart below on Reading a Scholarly Article using the SQ3R method: