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2018-19 Honors Biology - Scholarly Journal Articles: Step One: Selecting an Article

Good vs. Bad Articles

Purpose

When seeking a scholarly article, your selection must include a number of criteria. You will learn about the following concepts in this station: 

  • Peer reviewed articles (Task #1)
  • The sections of a scholarly article (Task #2)
  • "Good" vs. "Bad" articles for this assignment (Task #3)

Peer Reviewed Articles

 Task #1: 

  1. Each person will open the webpage linked below (click the image). 
  2. Individually, read the information on the page, with the goals of understanding how and why articles are peer reviewed in science. 
  3. As a group, discuss the following:
    • What is the process for peer review of a scholarly article?
    • What is the benefit of finding a peer reviewed article? 

"Anatomy of a Scholarly Article"

Task #2: 

  1. Watch the video, linked below.
  2. Take notes (on your Google Doc or handout) and explain the purpose of the following sections of a scholarly article (you may want to pause the video throughout this process):  
    • ​​Journal Title
    • Author Information
    • Abstract
    • Introduction
    • Methods (also called Methodology) 
    • Results / Findings 
    • Discussion / Conclusion 
    • Reference List

Apply what you learned!

Task #3: 

  • Open the two articles linked below (please note, keep the articles as PDF files in order to see all the information): 
  • As a group, discuss why one article is "good" and the other article is "bad" for this assignment. Go beyond the length of the article in your explanation and be certain to include a discussion of the experiment on which the article is based (you must select an article detailing an experiment, not one that reviews prior research). You may want to use what you learned in the "Anatomy of a Scholarly Article" activity in your explanation. 
  • Individually complete the "Good vs. Bad Articles" section of your Google Doc / handout.