Scientific research articles include original studies and review articles that contribute to the current scholarship on a given topic.
The table below describes the components of scholarly articles in the Social Sciences and Physical Sciences. The majority of articles in these disciplines will have the sections listed below.
| Title | Summarizes the main idea of the article. |
| Authors | Usually the author names along with their institutional affiliations will be listed. |
| Abstract | A brief summary of the contents of the article. Use the abstract as your roadmap to the article’s contents but don’t rely on it exclusively to evaluate or draw conclusions about the research. |
| Introduction | This usually provides a review of previous studies and lists the questions addressed by the research. |
| Method | This section explains how the authors conducted their research. It should tell you who the participants were and what methods of data collection were used in order to answer the authors’ questions. It also describes the authors’ approach to analysis of the data they collected. |
| Results | This section presents the findings of the authors’ research. It can be a combination of text, charts, graphs and/or tables, all tools to illustrate what the research data shows. |
| Discussion | Unlike the Results section, the discussion is a narrative where the authors’ summarize and explain their findings, explains how this research fits into the body of literature on the subject as well as the study’s limitations and suggestions for next steps in future research. |
| References | This is an alphabetical listing of works used to support the research and cited by the authors. |
