sample article review

sample article review

The Importance of Article Reviews in Academic Research

1. Introduction

The exploitation of scientific findings is not only knowing the results of research, but also knowing what these results mean. A scientific research result gives us a point of view about a certain issue. Research results need to be looked at in detail and critically, in order to validate the credibility of the research and to prevent premature application. In the field of natural science and social science, research results appear in a written document, such as journal articles and the like. A journal article is a paper containing the author’s research results, and is published in periodicals (journals). Due to the limited pages of a journal, sometimes it makes the author have difficulty in explaining a research that has been made, so sometimes the article is very brief and the important things are not explained in detail. Journal articles will contain the newest issues, especially in natural sciences and social sciences. For example, this time, there is research on the global warming problem stating that there is a new theory that links ozone depletion with global warming. It is a pity if the theory is not explained in that article. This thing certainly becomes a good reason for lecturers to ask their students to dig up information from various sources and review articles. In any lecturers and professors meeting about article-based learning, there must be the question “Have you ever made a review of a journal article?”. This task is a boring task and makes students reluctant to do it and tends to do it carelessly, and the result is not in accordance with expectations.

2. Benefits of Article Reviews

Revealing potential innovation Article reviews have a major function to reveal potential innovation for an area in a particular context. This is because by doing a review, a person can analyze, evaluate, and identify something new or in a scientific journal. This will be very useful in developed science because the researchers should know what has been done before, measured from the effect, and evaluate the limitations before analyzing something that can be tested. This is also asserted by Wong and McLean, where according to them the best article that can be reviewed is the one that has characteristics as follows: a) The study to be reported is an important addition to the current knowledge or practice; b) The design of the study is strong; c) The data are soundly interpreted, and d) the article is well written. By knowing innovative ideas, it will be easier to evaluate something that can be tested and determine the importance of the study to be tested. This is what happens as we did a review in the mental work area with the systematic review method that the authors encountered much knowledge that was produced not in the form of testing of a hypothesis, so it is not known the truth of an alternative that can be used as a practice and the author wants to suggest. By knowing certain research has not tested a specific alternative, it will search for the article concerning the research is reviewed then proposed for testing in research that will he did because it was considered important to the practice and contribute to applied psychology.

3. How to Conduct an Effective Article Review

To evaluate the article, give an overall assessment. This is usually in terms of your personal feelings on the article, as well as whether you would recommend the article to others. Next, there is a series of steps to clearly identify, with examples, how to determine the content of the article and if the article is comprehensible and credible. The assessment is often done under the three subheadings of description, analysis, and evaluation.

Skim through the article. What kind of article is it? Is it a report, an analysis, a summary, or an informed argument? During or after your first reading of an article, read over the introduction again. This should outline the main topic that the article is about and the author’s hypothesis. The introduction may be easy to identify, but finding the author’s hypothesis and main topic can be hard. Also, the hypothesis may be in more than one place. Now you should have enough understanding of the article to begin to evaluate it.

First, pay attention to the title and abstract of the article. Does the title accurately represent the article? Is the abstract informative and based on the content of the article? The title and abstract are the most important parts of an article when trying to decide if it is worth reading in detail. If the article is not what you are looking for, it will not have information for a review.

4. Common Mistakes to Avoid in Article Reviews

Most students find reviewing an article to be a daunting task and quite tricky as it is not simply a matter of reading the article and expressing an opinion. There are common mistakes that are usually made in article reviews and these are often as a result of students not understanding the purpose of article review. From John Pollock’s “How to Do It” (1990), article reviews differ from summaries, provision of contents or interpretation; reviews essentially evaluate or critic an article, using the argument of the article to create a basis for their assessment. This is the fundamental goal that a student’s review should aim to achieve but often it is forgotten. An article can be good in many ways, it may contain interesting information, but if it fundamentally fails in its goal to put this information together to form a clear argument, then the article is not so good. This is very important as clarity of argument is the single most important factor in an article and it is because of this that students should focus on this aspect when reviewing. Failure to recognise this will lead to various mistakes. One common mistake is providing too much summary. Far too often students go through the article paragraph by paragraph, summarizing each one, and this forms the majority of the review, with a small conclusion tacked on at the end. This is not a review as it fails to use the argument of the article as a basis, it is simply a summary and if a marker did not see the article it would be quite useless to them, as well as this too much summary is waste of word limit!

5. Conclusion

This paper has endeavored to explain the importance of review articles in academic research. Not being original research, review articles are based on the previously done research, so they do not require a detailed explanation of the research methodology. A list is a great way to order the information in an article. Many people find having an article explained or outlined before they move onto reading, making it easier to understand. A well-written review article can become the most cited article in a specific area. This is due to the simple fact that a review article will provide a better understanding of the area and will result in less need for future research. Each citation will include the review article and the original research article. This will ultimately put the review article at the top of a citation index with fewer future citations needed, saving research on the same topic in the future. This is very beneficial in cases such as health research where time is of the essence. Review articles more often than not answer a specific question and do not cover a broad area of material. This is very beneficial to a time-poor reader who can just skim read a review article to find the specific information that they are looking for. In conclusion to this paper, it is evident of the importance of a review article. Time and money can be saved in research, and a better understanding of medical topics can be reached, ultimately improving the health of the community.