research article review template

research article review template

The Importance of Research Article Review

1. Introduction

Another effective approach would be to solve the problem that the author has worked on before reading his article. In order to solve the problem, the student would seek to understand the methodology the author has used, and at the same time, since the student and the author are working on the same problem, it will give the student an opportunity to critically assess what is written in the article. The major advantage to the student here is the possibility of the article reviewed being of significant interest to the student. In which case, the student by now will have acquired full knowledge of what the research article holds and has learned it from a fellow peer, although not in person. He may even try to compare his own method of solving the problem with the author’s and communicating with the author may clear any doubts. The student should follow up all background information that the article references. This can turn into a small literature survey and can serve to be very useful in the student’s career as it hones the skills of tracing the history and development of a particular topic. Background information usually extends widely into a variety of different fields. This can end up with the student learning something that is not entirely related to the research article, so it is pertinent that the student stays focused on the relevant topic. This is a great way to induce self-learning and may provide ideas for the student if he ever decides to work on a similar problem in the future.

Effective and efficient reading of research articles can be a time-consuming process. It need not be. Reading a research article can be an interesting and intellectually stimulating process only if one knows the proper approach. Reading on a topic that one is interested in can be very gratifying and makes the effort of the research article review less of a task. The review should contain an abstract, and if possible, a preview and summary. The preview and summary might not always be possible, but if it is, the article becomes more of a two-trial learning experience. This is a more effective approach, whereas the student knows what information is going to be thrown at him.

Value added by the research

2. Purpose of Research Article Review

This story does relate to evaluation being a technique of estimating the relative merits and/or comparative worth of alternative program activities, and it is a good example of how evaluation has not been fully understood. But it still does not fully answer the types of questions that we should be asking. Cause and effect studies are often carried out to compare new methods to an existing method to see if there are any improved outcomes. This is where the teacher would like to know if being consistent in praising students is more effective than praise or punishment. But the article still doesn’t fit the full criteria for a research article. It has given the example of the two different methods of the same action, but it hasn’t clearly defined the action; this will hinder any work that is done later to recall what the earlier findings were. So really the teacher could ask a student to write a reflection of what has occurred at the end of each week in an attempt to get the more specified comparison about the levels of praise, and it may well give some good comparative data. But a clumsy student survey is neither controlled nor experimental and is only a qualitative study, so the teacher has wasted potential knowledge. This example shows that the right questions are being asked; it is just that the article is not yet at the desired standard of a cause and effect study. So the comparative article can be assessed as to the methods and theories relative to cause and effect studies, and it will be found that it is akin on a theoretical basis, but methodically it is not at the same standard.

Packer and Penelope (year not cited) talked of how there is a lack of a technique for connecting evaluation with practical requirements for answering the questions. This again is because the people in today’s society are looking for those right and wrong answers and often believe that the rule should be sacrificed so the right answer can be found. They talk of to combat this issue, evaluations need to be designed that compare alternative courses of action, involving well-specified changes to the levels of an explanatory variable. The experimental and/or observational study conducted should be theory-based in order to provide information that will contribute to the understanding of cause and effect, in this case, the action being explaining students’ behavior and the variable being the levels of praise or punishment.

It is seen by many individuals as a dull and repetitive bill. This view is held because they envision an evaluation as a bunch of guidelines that mention what they must do before a project. The first thing is to encode the research question. Then you have to decide on the best study design to answer your question. Following this, you must carry out the study and then analyze the data. The final stage is to examine and understand the meaning of the results. At each step, there are a set of instructions which can be seen as rules, but often following these rules does not lead to the best outcome. This is where the article is misunderstood. Most people believe that there are right and wrong answers to the things we would like to know. This is why people hold the research in higher regard than the article. An illustration of this comes from the teaching profession. If you were to ask a teacher if they would like to know whether praise or punishment is more effective in maintaining a good standard of behavior from their students, they will always respond with, “Well, of course, praise would be better, but is it a more effective method?” Teachers do have alternative motives for praise, but it is an expensive part of the same experiment. This teacher may never get the same result with his/her alternative motive, so really they do not want to know the answer to that specific question because it would be time-consuming and expensive. So if a general comparison could be made here, it actually is not the best prospect. That would be to study what comparing praise to punishment has on the same action.

3. Key Components of a Research Article Review

Reference: “Guide to Writing a Critique.” Reach Trust. University of Sunderland. 1998.

Remember, an article to critique it effectively must be read at least more than once. You are to repeat the exact method of the article critiqued and then comment upon the areas identified. It is very important that you are clear and concise and do not allow your article critique to drift into another form of analysis.

Next, you have the analysis of the data: can you evaluate the way the results were obtained, their significance, and the analysis? What type of study has been conducted? Is it an experimental study? A field study? A theoretical study? Are the results reliable and discussions valid? This will greatly depend on the locality of the data and your job here is to relate the data to the discussions and results of your own article.

Position of the article within the theoretical framework. This is a very important section of your review for it is the part where you show how what you have read or what you are going to read relates to your own knowledge. This should be about two paragraphs in length. The first paragraph is a direct comparison of the article read to your own article. This is presented by using the same order as the method; highlighting the questions or hypothesis and then comparing and contrasting the method. The second paragraph is now a comparison of the article to another one within your own article and it is free to do this whatever way it wishes.

Abstract: An organized synopsis of the article. The specific material reviewed includes questions, problems, hypotheses, and methodology. This can be done best through an outline. It might also include recommendations. The contribution of the article to the field can be its greatest strength; it can also be its weakness. Discuss what the article adds to the field. Supporting evidence. You are then to critique the article by identifying the general method of the article (i.e. assertive, reflective, argumentative; compare and contrast, case study) and the specific methods involving the questions, hypothesis, and the testing of the hypothesis. The critique is also how the research is utilized – was it effective? The conclusion. Now the only conclusion to a research article where all the sections are clearly defined is actually a restatement of the abstract. This is to make sure that you have understood the article and a simple method to do this is to summarize the article in a few sentences.

4. Benefits of Conducting Research Article Reviews

Generally, research article review will increase the number of papers being reviewed. Such increase is truly important for the research. By reviewing the research article, the amount of scientific information that is available in a certain subject will be increased. This is vital for scientific progress. There are two possible outcomes of each reviewed article: either acceptance or rejection. If the review result is informed to the author, that author will get a clear idea on which part of his research should be kept and which part should be discarded. This will also benefit the author, so the author can revise his article to a better one, or the author can apply the suggested improvements to his further research. If the article is accepted, it does not mean the article is free from flaws. By storing the review result, the article can be used as a comparison to another similar article, as a learning material, or author ideas towards the same subject. The review result itself can be an important reference to measure the quality of the research.

5. Conclusion

In the process, this study has tried to make the readers understand the importance of ‘research article review’ and how this technique helps to select the best research articles available. In today’s world there are thousands of journals available and sometimes it is very difficult for the researchers to select the journals and articles which are best suited for their research work. This technique provides a reliable method to locate and evaluate the quality of articles available and hence saves precious time which would be wasted likely to select the wrong article. By evaluating the articles based on the factors as discussed in this study, researchers can systematically build important information about several articles, and easily compare it to select the most suitable and high-quality articles. This technique is not limited only to clinical researchers but to all individuals who are in the field of medical science and health care. With increasing use of internet as a source to find research articles, this method provides a necessary protocol which will facilitate researchers to quickly find desirable articles out of millions of articles available on the web. This study does not intend to create controversial methods or promote a dogmatic approach to the search of research articles. It is understood that these techniques are subjective and certainly not free from errors or bias. But what this study attempts to do is create a uniform and acceptable method to search for articles. To generate and rank relevant articles in a reproducible manner, allowing comparison between articles and determining changes in article relevance over time. This is evidently a better technique than skimming articles and deciding the relevance of the article based on its title, author or source, because it is still more likely to retrieve better articles using the described method.