If you encounter any issues or errors in this guide, please let me know using this feedback form.
Primary research in biology is typically structured the same way across all articles. You will find the following sections:
Each of these sections has a specific purpose and each of them is important.
The Abstract is a short summary of the paper, and is meant to help you decide whether or not to read the rest of the paper. It can often be dense and full of jargon, and so can be difficult to fully comprehend, particularly if you are new to the field. However, it should have enough information to help you figure out if the paper might be relevant to your topic.
Especially if you are looking for sources to cite in an assignment, don't fall into the trap of reading only the abstract. If you are trying to cite a paper based only on the information contained in the abstract, you are taking the wrong approach. Sometimes the abstract simplifies things too much and misrepresents the part you're interested in. Sometimes the abstract discusses others' work and you need to look through the citations in the introduction or discussion in order to find the original idea to cite. Whatever the situation, it is bad research to only read the abstract before citing a paper.
The Introduction section contains background information as well as the rationale for the study described in the paper. A good introduction will tell you why the current study is important, contextualize other work already done on the topic, discuss any controversies on the topic that may exist, and outline the hypotheses for the current study. It typically flows from general information to specific information, the big picture to the current study.
If you are having a difficult time understanding the Introduction of a paper, you're probably going to have a hard time with the rest of the paper too. As you read, make note of any unfamiliar terms or concepts so you can look them up. Textbooks are great resources for this.
If you find information in the Introduction section that you want to cite and include in your own paper, be careful! If Paper A has information you want to use which includes a citation to Paper B, you need to track down Paper B and cite it instead. For one thing, this will allow you to confirm the interpretation in Paper A of Paper B's work, and for another, it will give proper credit to the authors of Paper B as the originator of the idea you want to use.
The Methods/Materials section contains information about the study design. Depending on the field and the topic, this section may describe an experiment, the details of an observational study, or even how a computer model was created. It should also include information about which statistical analyses, if any, were performed on the data (but not the results of the analyses).
You may encounter some articles that do not place this section in between the Introduction and the Results sections, and instead place it at the end of the paper or in supplemental materials.
The Results section is hyper-focused on the findings of the paper. It will only talk about what was found, not why. This section can be the most difficult for non-experts to understand, as it typically contains very detailed statistics, figures, and tables.
If you're having trouble reading the results section, here are a couple of things to try to look for:
The Discussion section is where you will find the explanation of the Results. Do the findings of the study support or disprove the hypotheses? Are there any findings that do not make sense in the context of the larger body of research? The flow of the Discussion section is often the reverse of the Introduction, describing the current study's findings first and going into how they fit into the larger research landscape.
In some papers, you will find a combined Results and Discussion section.
The Conclusion section is where the authors will summarize the findings of the current study and why they matter in the big picture. It also typically contains a brief overview of future directions for this research.
The References section is where you will find every source that was cited in the body of the paper. Depending on the citation style being used, you will find them sorted in alphabetical order by the first author's last name or in numerical order based on the order they were cited in the paper. In biology, most sources cited will be journal articles, but you may also see citations to things like book chapters, entire books, and datasets.
The References section is a great place to look for additional sources that may be relevant to your topic.