How to Find and Read Research Articles

Last week, we covered how to locate a variety of parenting resources, including books, social media, and community resources. This week, we want to share some suggestions for how to approach medical or research oriented resources. For many of us, reading a research study is a new skill. But it can be an extremely useful one when we are trying to explore the evidence for or against a certain decision. 

As a healthcare professional and trained in research, these tips come from my (Caroline’s) own experience performing research, writing and reading science papers. 

For the purposes of this post, we’re talking about scientific resources that are papers published in a medical or research journal. Examples of these kinds of journals are Nature and Science. These publications typically go through a rigorous process of review and editing before they are published. The authors who complete a particular research study write up their process and the results they found, submit it to a journal, and the editors of that journal send the manuscript out to be reviewed by other scientists in the field. The reviewers determine whether the paper has scientific worth, followed the appropriate research process, includes meaningful results, and is concise and accurate. If edits are necessary, the authors will revise the paper, sometimes requiring them to perform additional scientific experiments, until it is accepted by the journal for formal publication. 

For some people, approaching a whole research study and trying to understand what’s relevant to you can be overwhelming. If you’re not a scientist, this is totally normal! You can often find news articles in popular news outlets that describe summaries of research studies, especially if it’s a hot topic or breaking news. Reading a news summary can provide you with the basic conclusions without requiring a lot of time and energy spent reading the actual study. 

An example of this was a recent New York Times article highlighting a study published in the journal Nature about a hormone underlying morning sickness in pregnancy. 

You can read the news article here: 

and the full research study here. 

If you browse these links, you can see that the New York Times article provides a more layperson summary of the research and important results. These kinds of news articles tend to be more commonly shared around social media, and there’s usually a link included to click through to the original research study. 

Part 1: Reading a Research Article 

If you are reading a research study shared on social media, by a friend, or another resource, these tips will hopefully help you navigate the components of the study and how to understand its conclusions. 

If you’re new to reading research articles, we’d recommend starting here! 

1. Overview of research article format

If you click a link for a research study, the most likely website it will take you to is PubMed. This website is hosted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Library of Medicine. It is the most common place to see a research publication online. 

On PubMed, you’ll typically see a page like this showing your article: 

Here you can see the article title, the authors, and additional information about the publication. Sometimes, however, you might be taken to a different site where the article is published, so the format might look different. 

Research papers typically include several different components. Here is a brief summary of what each part covers. This information can be helpful in deciding how to approach the paper and which sections are more helpful versus what you could skim over. 

Abstract: this section is a general summary of the whole research study, including what the authors were studying, their results, and the main conclusions. It’s usually right at the top of the article and a great section to read to get an overview of the whole study. 

Introduction: this section provides background information that is helpful for understanding the context of the research study, and why the authors performed the research. 

Methods: this section includes the research approach and experimental techniques that the authors used to perform the study. It’s often a bit harder to read, unless you are an expert in scientific techniques. 

Results/Data: often including figures, graphs, or tables, this section presents the data from the research and usually describes what it means. 

Conclusions: this section wraps up the study by stating the main conclusions from the research. You can think of it as the take home messages! Also a great section to read if you just want the main points. 

2. 5 top tips for reading a research article 

As you can see, there is a lot contained within a research study! Sometimes, reading it word for word can be overwhelming and more information than you need. 

Here are my 5 top tips for reading a research article efficiently and effectively: 

1. Read only the Abstract: you might be able to get a gist for what the study showed and gather the main conclusions just from reading the abstract! 

2. Don’t read the Methods: the methods may be more detailed than you are looking for to inform your decision making. Just skip this section! 

3. Look at the figures and tables: sometimes looking through the graphs or tables can help you get a sense for the results and data provided by the study. 

4. Read the figure and/or table legends: even better, the figure legends often summarize the data presented in a concise way. 

5. Skip straight to the Conclusions: similar to the tip of reading only the abstract, skipping to the conclusions is a quick way to get the general take home message!  

Part 2: Searching for Research Articles 

If delving into the science is your forte, you can search for research studies yourself. The tips below will hopefully provide you with some guidance for this process. 

1. Where to search 

The best place to search for research studies is the PubMed website hosted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Library of Medicine. Typing “PubMed” into your Google search bar should bring up this page: 

To find research studies, simply type a keyword or phrase for your topic into the search bar. The PubMed server will pull up all relevant research articles in a list. 

For example, a search might look like this: 

2. How to filter results 

You can filter this list of search results by using the tools in the left hand side bar. For example, you can click on results published in a particular year or range of years. Or, you can choose a certain article type or filter based on whether the full article is available online for free. 

3. How to view an article

To view an article, click on the title from your list of search results. This will bring you to a page like below: 

From here, you can usually view the Abstract of the article. To read the full text, click on the “Full Text Links” on the right side bar. Sometimes, this will take you to another website where the article is published. 

Unfortunately, many articles do require subscription or payment to view the full text. This can be frustrating, especially when you find just the article you were looking for. There are some options for how to get around these paywalls, but usually, searching for another similar study or looking for a news article summary of that study is unfortunately your best option. 

4. How to do an advanced search

In addition to typing your keywords into the basic search box, PubMed also offers you an option to do an advanced search. Simply click the “Advanced” button under the main search box. You’ll see a page like this: 

Here, you can add search terms using “AND” or “OR” functions to filter your search more specifically. You can see an example where I’ve entered the terms “pediatric” AND “vaccines” because I want to find all the articles that include both these terms. You can also save a particular set of search terms that you’ve created if you want to come back to it later. 

5. How to save an article 

The simplest method of saving an article is to download the PDF to your computer or save the web URL. 

You can also make a free account to save articles using a Google Account or another method of signing up or logging in. If you click the Log In button at the top right of the search page, it will give you options to log in or sign up like what you see in the image below. Signing up will create a dashboard for you where you can save articles or searches if you so desire. 

We hope these tips were useful as you explore research studies relevant to your parenting decisions! What else would you like to know about scientific research that would help you make decisions smoothly? Let us know in the comments!