Understanting Scientific Journals & Articles
Understanting Scientific Journals & Articles
Understanting Scientific Journals & Articles
Just below these journals in terms of their reach are the top-tier
disciplinary journals like Analytical Chemistry, Applied Geochemistry,
Neuron, Journal of Geophysical Research, and many others. These
journals tend to publish broad-based research focused on specific
disciplines, such as chemistry, geology, neurology, nuclear physics,
etc.
Abstract: The abstract is the first part of the article that appears
right after the listing of authors in an article. In it, the authors briefly
describe the research question, the general methods, and the major
findings and implications of the work. Providing a summary like this at
the beginning of an article serves two purposes: First, it gives readers
a way to decide whether the article in question discusses research
that interests them, and second, it is entered into literature databases
as a means of providing more information to people doing scientific
literature searches. For both purposes, it is important to have a short
version of the full story. In this case, all of the critical information
about the timing of the study, the type of data collected, and the
potential interpretations of the findings is captured in four
straightforward sentences as seen below:
Figure 3: An example of the data presented in the Ivory-billed woodpecker article (Fitzpatrick et
al., 2005, Figure 1).image © Science