How to Read a Scholarly Article

Review the well-known IMRD model of academic writing below, which is most common in science and social science journal articles.

Then, click on the image of a scholarly article in the left column, and explore the components of academic articles in more detail.

With some variation among the different disciplines, most scholarly articles of original research follow the IMRD model, which consists of the following components:

Introduction

• Literature Review
• Statement of Problem (i.e. "the Gap")
• Plan to Solve the Problem

Method & Results

• How Research was Done
• Data
• What Answers were Found

Discussion

• Interpretation of Results
  (What Does It Mean?)
• Implications for the Field

This form is most obvious in scientific studies, where the methods are clearly defined and described, and data is often presented in tables or graphs for analysis.

In other fields, such as history, the method and results may be embedded in a narrative, perhaps describing and interpreting events from archival sources. In this case, the method is the selection of archival sources and how they were interpreted, while the results are the interpretation and resultant story.

In full-length books, you might see this general pattern followed over the entire book, within each chapter, or both.

The following handouts provide diagrams of academic writing that may be useful when reading scholarly books and articles: