How to read a journal article

First off, not every journal article is hard to read. Articles in peer-review journals have a reputation of being difficult and dry as dust. But an article that is right on target for your area of interest won't appear that way to you (even if it might to me). You don't need the advice in this post to read articles that are innately interesting to you. Read and absorb the way you would any other nonfiction writing.

Second, you are not expected to read and fully understand every article that is assigned in a class (but don't imagine that a teacher will volunteer this information). Articles are assigned for many reasons.

Sometimes faculty members want students exposed to a seminal work in the field. In a social science field, this might be an article that provides the theoretical underpinnings for the discipline. As a student, you are supposed to learn simply that such a thing exists. In this case, the article will be referred to in only a passing manner, if at all, and will not be the basis of discussion or essay questions.

Sometimes a teacher wants to introduce a concept and chooses a seminal work to do it. As a student, you are expect to understand the concept but not every paragraph of the article. For example, I am currently tackling an article that introduces the concept of loose coupling in organizations. It was written in the 1970s about management in educational settings. To fully understand it, I would have to read it in the context of educational management of the mid to late twentieth century. I can tell from how this article is used as the basis for an essay question that I'm not expected to do that for this class. I am expected to understand the concept of loose coupling and be able to think about how that might apply to library settings.

Most of the time, you want to read assigned articles before class. But if you find yourself struggling with an article, wait and see how it is treated in the class. Perhaps you don't really need to read it at all or there are one or two things to focus on and you can have a fuzzy understanding of the rest.

Finally, read journal articles actively. My favorite method is to make a mind map of the article by first skimming the article for the major headings, then adding more details to the map as I read the article. Often, I will make a summary mind map after I have read the article. Any method that involves some kind of pre-reading, note-taking, and summarizing will do for this task. You want to get the Big Picture, fill in the details, then reflect on the whole thing.     #

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