Research Guides: CORE 3000: Meditation and Human Values: Reading Scholarly Sources

How to Read a Scholarly Article

Broadly speaking, scholarly articles on this topic will come in two main flavors:

Essays that use logic and analysis of evidence to prove a point/thesis ("humanities-style").
Reports on new research using the scientific method ("science-style").

Hint: If you see sections labeled "Methods" or "Results, it's a science-style article. If instead all section subheadings are based on topics, it's probably a humanities-style article.

In both cases, it helps to have a good reading strategy. The following guides will help you:

For humanities-style articles: How to read an article in the humanities
For science-style articles: How to read a scholarly article

Reading Scholarly Articles in the Humanities

Template for Reading Articles in the Humanities

Typical Article Structure

Section	What to Look for
Introduction	What problem is the author trying to solve? What conversation is the author joining? What is the main argument the author is trying to make?
Body	How is the argument structured? What does the author use as evidence to support their argument? What theory or framework does the author to use to interpret the evidence?
Conclusion	How does this analysis aid our understanding of the topic? What areas for future research does it suggest?
References	Would any of the sources this article cites be useful for my project?

Reading Scholarly Articles in the Social Sciences

Template for Reading Articles in the Social Sciences

Typical Article Structure

Section	What to Look for
Introduction	What is the main contribution this study makes to the literature on this topic (you can also look to the conclusion for this)? Is this going to be relevant to your project?
Literature Review	What are the major themes the author has identified in the literature as being pertinent to their topic? Are there any sources cited here that could be useful for your research? How does the author see their research question fitting in to the rest of this literature?
Methods	What is the researcher's method of answering the research question? (e.g., qualitative, quantitative) What are the variables being measured/analyzed? Where is the data coming from?
Results	Based on their analysis of the data, what answers to their research questions did the authors find?
Discussion and Conclusion	What is the main contribution this study makes to the literature on this topic (you can also look to the introduction for this)? What are the key takeaways from this study? How do the results of this study fit in with the results of other studies on this topic? What are some questions left unanswered?
References	Would any of the sources this article cites be useful for my project?

CORE 3000: Meditation and Human Values: Reading Scholarly Sources

How to Read a Scholarly Article

Reading Scholarly Articles in the Humanities

Typical Article Structure

Reading Scholarly Articles in the Social Sciences

Typical Article Structure

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