Research Guides: PSY 3450: Behavioral Neuroscience: Identifying & Reading Research Articles

Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed Articles

What are Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed Articles?

Articles that report the results of a research study or make an academic argument.
Published in academic journals.
Show what scholars and experts in the field have discovered about your topic and the current conversation around it.
Peer-reviewed before being accepted for publication, where they are vetted by other experts in their field. The peer-review process helps ensure high quality and accuracy.
Read and used by professionals to improve their work practices or make informed policy decisions—this is called "evidence based practice."

How are Scholarly Articles Structured?

Most scholarly articles follow the structure seen in the image above. Understanding this structure will help you be a more efficient reader and understand which parts of the article are most useful to you as a researcher.

Abstract: A summary of the article. Often includes the main research question asked by the author and a brief summary of the findings.
Introduction: Sets up the argument or research question of the article—what is being studied and why.
- Literature Review: A summary of previous research that informed the article—usually illustrates gaps in previous research and demonstrates a need for the current article. This may be a separate section or part of the introduction.
Methods / Methodology: How the research study was designed and conducted, including if they used methods that are quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods.
Results: What the author found in their research—usually includes statistics and data, often illustrated using charts and graphs.
Discussion / Findings: An interpretation of what the author found—their main findings or takeaways from the research. This is the "meat" of the author's discoveries and often the most useful part to reference in your own papers.
Conclusion: What the research means to the field and what questions remain to be answered.

Primary/Empirical Sources and Secondary Sources

In this class, you're required to find and use primary source research articles. Secondary sources (review articles, magazine articles, news stories, etc.) will not be accepted.

Primary source articles describe original research studies; these are also known as empirical articles. Primary source articles are written by the people who conducted the research and mark the first time the research has been published. Secondary sources usually comment on or review primary sources and demonstrate trends over time. Primary sources containing original research start a scholarly conversation, whereas secondary sources continue that conversation through discussion, summaries, and commentary.

	Primary/Empirical Sources	Secondary Sources
Definition	Sources that present original research, written by the people who conducted the research.	Sources that comment on, summarize, review, or discuss primary sources.
Common Formats	Original research articles in scholarly journals, conference papers, dissertations.	Literature review articles in journals, magazine or newspaper articles summarizing a research study, handbooks with literature review chapters.
Examples	An article detailing how one psychological study was designed, how they analyzed the data, and presenting their original findings.	An article compiling various literature published on a psychological topic over a five-year period, summarizing results from the studies and making commentary on trends.
Clues to Look For	Look for a section in the article labeled Method or Methodology—if it's a primary source, this section will describe how they conducted their experiment or research study.	Look for the word "review" or the phrase "literature review" in the title of the article or in the article's abstract. A Method or Methodology section may also describe the steps they took to compile their literature review. Newspaper and magazine articles about research studies will almost always be secondary sources reviewing or summarizing primary sources.

Reading & Writing Tips

For your PSY 3450 article critique, you'll need to find a primary research article that involves studying the brain. The following tips will help you with the reading and writing process:

Read the abstract to get a quick overview of the research question, research methods used, and brief results.
Highlight or take notes as you're reading to help you remember main ideas you'd like to include in your paper.
Skim the introduction to find the current study's research question, as well as previous research done on this topic.
Skim through the Methods or Methodology section—only use an article that involved a technique for studying the brain in some way.
Read the Discussion and Conclusions section closely, and make note of the study's main conclusions and any recommendations they're making based on the research. (In your critique, you'll need to explain both how the research was conducted, and what the researchers learned.)
Check if the article includes any limitations of the research—these are often listed near the end of the article, sometimes with their own subheading. Since you're critiquing the research, the limitations will be important to mention.
In your writing, avoid using direct quotations where you copy word for word from the article, or use direct quotes sparingly. Instead, paraphrase or summarize ideas from the article in your own words.
Be cautious about referencing information found in the Introduction section of articles. There's a good chance the author is actually referencing previous research articles, in which case you would want to use the citation to track down the original article and cite that instead.
The UVU Writing Center is a great resource for helping you structure your paper or for help with grammar questions.