Evaluating Information Sources

When your assignment asks for research articles, you’ll need to look in academic journals. Many library databases let you filter your search to show only peer-reviewed journals, which is a great start—but not all articles in those journals are research articles.

Academic journals often include a mix of content. Knowing the different types of articles they publish will help you spot which ones are actual research studies.

Note: Even in peer-reviewed journals, not every article is peer-reviewed. Items like editorials, book reviews, and news briefs may not go through the same review process. To be sure, check the journal’s editorial policies.

Types of Articles in Academic Journals

🔬 Research Article
Presents original findings from a study. Look for:

•     Introduction
•     Research design and methods
•     Data analysis
•     Bibliography

Also called empirical studies, these are the core of scholarly journals.

📚 Review Article
Summarizes and analyzes existing research on a topic. Great for background reading and finding sources, but not original research.

🩺 Clinical Article
Written for professionals (e.g., nurses), often describing case studies or new techniques. May not follow a formal research structure.

📖 Theoretical Article
Explores or proposes new theories using existing research. These advance ideas but don’t present new data.

📰 News or Brief Reports
Short updates or summaries of recent research. These are not full research articles and may preview studies that haven’t been published yet.

📘 Book Reviews
Critiques new scholarly books. Useful for discovering resources, but not research articles.

When evaluating academic journal articles for quality, take a look at the individual sections of the paper.

Abstract

The abstract is a summary of an article. An abstract provides a broad overview of the article's content, synthesizing the most important information. It should also identify both the purpose of the research and its conclusions.

Question to ask:

•    According to the abstract, what is the main point of the article?

Introduction

The Introduction should give you an understanding of what is being researched, how, and why the research is of importance. When you read the introduction section of a journal article, you should have a clear idea of what the article is about, and what the research focus is.

An Introduction will identify the importance of the research to the academic field, and provide you with a clear hypothesis or a research question/statement.

Questions to ask:

•     What issues do the authors seem concerned about?
•     What is the authors’ research question or hypothesis?

Literature Review

The Literature Review is a comprehensive scan of previously published research on a specific topic. Authors use the literature review to provide readers with a current understanding of the topic, and identify existing research gaps.

Questions to ask:

•     How relevant is the literature review to the article's research question/s?
•     Does the literature review include opposing viewpoints?

Methods

In the methods section, you should be able to find information about the authors' research process. Was the research qualitative or quantitative? How big was their sample group/test population? On occasion, authors will include the full research instrument in the appendix (at the end of the article). The methodology section might feature tables, statistical analyses, calculations, and questions asked as part of the research.

Questions to ask:

•     What type of study did the authors undertake to arrive at their results (e.g. randomized trials, case studies)?
•     How was the data collected (e.g. survey, focus groups, individual interviews)?
•     How extensive was the population sample?

Results

The Results section is where you find information about the final results of the authors' research. Here, you should be able to read about the analyzed results of the study, as well as have access to raw statistical data.

Are these results shared with the readers? Are they clearly stated? Is there access to supporting analysis such as graphs, charts, tables that are clear and easy to follow? Do you have access to the statistics? Can you figure out the results of the experiment, survey, etc, without a discussion of why they occurred?

Questions to ask:

•     What are the authors' findings?
•     Are the findings aligned to the main research question/s?
•     Do the authors address the problems or limitations of their research methods?

Discussion and Conclusions

Check out the discussion of the results and the author's overall observations in the conclusion of the article. Are all the results of the experiment, survey, etc., discussed? Are the conclusions drawn from this experiment based on enough data? Are there previous studies done on this topic, and are they part of the discussion, or are you left confused?

Questions to ask:

•     What evidence do authors provide to support or dispute their research question?
•     Do the authors provide any recommendations as a result of their findings?
•     Are any conflicts of interest disclosed?

References

The references section provides you with a full scope of research consulted as part of the authors' project. References are an excellent way to find additional journal articles on a specific topic.

This section was adapted from Evaluating Journal Articles from The Learning Portal/College Libraries Ontario under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.