The Reading Scholarly Articles section of this guide includes suggestions for how to interpret a scholarly article and its abstract.
For this activity, you will work in groups to explore a primary research article.
Each group only needs to fill out one worksheet, so you should have one person open the link and then add each group member to the Google Doc.
2. Find your group number on the list below and open your article.
The links will take you to a database record. Look for a link that says "Full Text PDF" or "View PDF" and click on that to view the article. You should access it as a PDF, not as a web page.
Group 1
Omoigberale, M. O., Ezenwa, I. M., Biose, E., & Okoye, C. (2021). The impact of rubber effluent discharges on the water quality of a tropical rain forest river in Nigeria. Afr. J. Aquat. Sci. 46, 390–401.
Group 2
McMichael, C. E., Smith, D. P., & Johnson, R. C. (2013). Landscape indicators of stream water quality in central Appalachia (USA): Land use/land cover or land surface condition? Aquat. Ecosyst. Health Manage. 16, 329–337.
Group 3
Matis, P. A., Donelson, J. M., Bush, S., Fox, R. J., & Booth, D. J. (2018). Temperature influences habitat preference of coral reef fishes: Will generalists become more specialised in a warming ocean? Global Change Biol. 24, 3158–3169.
Group 4
Rajabizadeh, M., Moriniere, J., & Rajaei, H. (2021). Adaptation to the hottest spot on earth: Dietary ecology of an enigmatic desert gecko based on DNA metabarcoding. J. Zool. Syst. Evol. Res. 59, 1470–1480.
Group 5
Sydenham, M. A. K., Skrindo, A. B., Nowell, M. S., Venter, Z. S., Skoog, D. I. J., Torvanger, M. S., Hanevik, K.-A., Dupont, Y. L., Olesen, J. M., Nielsen, A., et al. (2024). Climatic conditions and landscape diversity predict plant–bee interactions and pollen deposition in bee-pollinated plants. Ecography. 2024, 9.
The articles above are examples of primary research articles where the authors of the article conducted their own unique study. Below is an example of a review article, where the authors examined existing research and reported their findings about trends in a particular research area. This review article also went through a peer review process and is scholarly, but is not primary research.
Compare the article's abstract and section headings with your primary research article. Think about what looks similar and what looks different. Are there sections in the primary research article that do not exist in the review article? What does this tell you about the two different types of articles?
Review Article Example
Bernery, C., Bellard, C., Courchamp, F., Brosse, S., Gozlan, R. E., Jaric, I., Teletchea, F., & Leroy, B. (2022). Freshwater fish invasions: A comprehensive review. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 53, 427–456.