On this page, you will learn what research articles are, including:
Researchers, like your DLA mentors, conduct original research and then publish articles about their research in scholarly journals. Articles published in scholarly journals usually go through a peer review process. Researchers may also present their research at a professional conference and in this case they also write a paper that is peer reviewed and published in the proceedings of the conference.
Lets explore how the peer review process works using the video "Peer Review in 3 Minutes" by the the North Carolina State University Library.
Identify the information on the article that is needed to cite the article. To create a citation for an article, you need the authors, year published, article title, journal title, volume number, and page numbers (if given). Here is an example image of the top of a research article with the citing information below. Find each piece of information on the article, clicking on the image will open the article in a new window:
Authors: Katzschmann, R. K., DelPreto, J., MacCurdy, R., & Rus, D.
Year published: 2018
Article title: Exploration of underwater life with an acoustically controlled soft robotic fish
Journal title: Science Robotics
Volume number: 3(16)
Here is another example image of the top of a research article with the citing information below. Find each piece of information on the article, clicking on the image will open the article in a new window:
Authors: Ranasinghe, N., Tolley, D., Nguyen, T. N. T., Yan, L., Chew, B., & Do, E. Y.-L.
Year published: 2019
Article title: Augmented Flavours: Modulation of Flavour Experiences Through Electric Taste Augmentation
Journal title: Food Research International
Volume number: 117
Page numbers: 60–68
Next, lets explore the what is in each section of a typical scholarly literature article using the video The Anatomy of a Scientific Article by the Writing Center at CU Denver.
Now that you know how researchers publish their research in peer-reviewed journal articles, lets consider why searching for these research articles is an important part of doing your own original research. Reasons to find and read research articles include:
Note: this information is not in the Qualtrics activity for DLA students. This infographic is provided as an additional resource for learning about the peer-review process.
Infographic by Jayashree Rajagopalan