original research and review article examples

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Types of journal articles

It is helpful to familiarise yourself with the different types of articles published by journals. Although it may appear there are a large number of types of articles published due to the wide variety of names they are published under, most articles published are one of the following types; Original Research, Review Articles, Short reports or Letters, Case Studies, Methodologies.

Original Research:

This is the most common type of journal manuscript used to publish full reports of data from research. It may be called an  Original Article, Research Article, Research, or just  Article, depending on the journal. The Original Research format is suitable for many different fields and different types of studies. It includes full Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections.

Short reports or Letters:

These papers communicate brief reports of data from original research that editors believe will be interesting to many researchers, and that will likely stimulate further research in the field. As they are relatively short the format is useful for scientists with results that are time sensitive (for example, those in highly competitive or quickly-changing disciplines). This format often has strict length limits, so some experimental details may not be published until the authors write a full Original Research manuscript. These papers are also sometimes called Brief communications .

Review Articles:

Review Articles provide a comprehensive summary of research on a certain topic, and a perspective on the state of the field and where it is heading. They are often written by leaders in a particular discipline after invitation from the editors of a journal. Reviews are often widely read (for example, by researchers looking for a full introduction to a field) and highly cited. Reviews commonly cite approximately 100 primary research articles.

TIP: If you would like to write a Review but have not been invited by a journal, be sure to check the journal website as some journals to not consider unsolicited Reviews. If the website does not mention whether Reviews are commissioned it is wise to send a pre-submission enquiry letter to the journal editor to propose your Review manuscript before you spend time writing it.  

Case Studies:

These articles report specific instances of interesting phenomena. A goal of Case Studies is to make other researchers aware of the possibility that a specific phenomenon might occur. This type of study is often used in medicine to report the occurrence of previously unknown or emerging pathologies.

Methodologies or Methods

These articles present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article should describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available.

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What is an original research article?

An original research article is a report of research activity that is written by the researchers who conducted the research or experiment. Original research articles may also be referred to as: “primary research articles” or “primary scientific literature.” In science courses, instructors may also refer to these as “peer-reviewed articles” or “refereed articles.”

Original research articles in the sciences have a specific purpose, follow a scientific article format, are peer reviewed, and published in academic journals.

Identifying Original Research: What to Look For

An "original research article" is an article that is reporting original research about new data or theories that have not been previously published. That might be the results of new experiments, or newly derived models or simulations. The article will include a detailed description of the methods used to produce them, so that other researchers can verify them. This description is often found in a section called "methods" or "materials and methods" or similar. Similarly, the results will generally be described in great detail, often in a section called "results."

Since the original research article is reporting the results of new research, the authors should be the scientists who conducted that research. They will have expertise in the field, and will usually be employed by a university or research lab.

In comparison, a newspaper or magazine article (such as in  The New York Times  or  National Geographic ) will usually be written by a journalist reporting on the actions of someone else.

An original research article will be written by and for scientists who study related topics. As such, the article should use precise, technical language to ensure that other researchers have an exact understanding of what was done, how to do it, and why it matters. There will be plentiful citations to previous work, helping place the research article in a broader context. The article will be published in an academic journal, follow a scientific format, and undergo peer-review.

Original research articles in the sciences follow the scientific format. ( This tutorial from North Carolina State University illustrates some of the key features of this format.)

Look for signs of this format in the subject headings or subsections of the article. You should see the following:

Scientific research that is published in academic journals undergoes a process called "peer review."

The peer review process goes like this:

• A researcher writes a paper and sends it in to an academic journal, where it is read by an editor
• The editor then sends the article to other scientists who study similar topics, who can best evaluate the article
• The scientists/reviewers examine the article's research methodology, reasoning, originality, and sginificance
• The scientists/reviewers then make suggestions and comments to impove the paper
• The original author is then given these suggestions and comments, and makes changes as needed
• This process repeats until everyone is satisfied and the article can be published within the academic journal

For more details about this process see the Peer Reviewed Publications guide.

This journal article  is an example. It was published in the journal  Royal Society Open Science  in 2015. Clicking on the button that says "Review History" will show the comments by the editors, reviewers and the author as it went through the peer review process. The "About Us" menu provides details about this journal; "About the journal" under that tab includes the statement that the journal is peer reviewed.

Review articles

There are a variety of article types published in academic, peer-reviewed journals, but the two most common are original research articles and review articles . They can look very similar, but have different purposes and structures.

Like original research articles, review articles are aimed at scientists and undergo peer-review. Review articles often even have “abstract,” “introduction,” and “reference” sections. However, they will not (generally) have a “methods” or “results” section because they are not reporting new data or theories. Instead, they review the current state of knowledge on a topic.

Press releases, newspaper or magazine articles

These won't be in a formal scientific format or be peer reviewed. The author will usually be a journalist, and the audience will be the general public. Since most readers are not interested in the precise details of the research, the language will usually be nontechnical and broad. Citations will be rare or nonexistent.

Tips for Finding Original research Articles

Search for articles in one of the library databases recommend for your subject area . If you are using Google, try searching in Google Scholar instead and you will get results that are more likely to be original research articles than what will come up in a regular Google search!

For tips on using library databases to find articles, see our Library DIY guides .

Tips for Finding the Source of a News Report about Science

If you've seen or heard a report about a new scientific finding or claim, these tips can help you find the original source:

• Often, the report will mention where the original research was published; look for sentences like "In an article published yesterday in the journal  Nature ..." You can use this to find the issue of the journal where the research was published, and look at the table of contents to find the original article.
• The report will often name the researchers involved. You can search relevant databases for their name and the topic of the report to find the original research that way.
• Sometimes you may have to go through multiple articles to find the original source. For example, a video or blog post may be based on a newspaper article, which in turn is reporting on a scientific discovery published in another journal; be sure to find the original research article.
• Don't be afraid to ask a librarian for help!

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Scientific Review Article

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Manisha Bahl, A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Scientific Review Article, Journal of Breast Imaging , Volume 5, Issue 4, July/August 2023, Pages 480–485, https://doi.org/10.1093/jbi/wbad028

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Scientific review articles are comprehensive, focused reviews of the scientific literature written by subject matter experts. The task of writing a scientific review article can seem overwhelming; however, it can be managed by using an organized approach and devoting sufficient time to the process. The process involves selecting a topic about which the authors are knowledgeable and enthusiastic, conducting a literature search and critical analysis of the literature, and writing the article, which is composed of an abstract, introduction, body, and conclusion, with accompanying tables and figures. This article, which focuses on the narrative or traditional literature review, is intended to serve as a guide with practical steps for new writers. Tips for success are also discussed, including selecting a focused topic, maintaining objectivity and balance while writing, avoiding tedious data presentation in a laundry list format, moving from descriptions of the literature to critical analysis, avoiding simplistic conclusions, and budgeting time for the overall process.

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How to write a good scientific review article

Affiliation.

• 1 The FEBS Journal Editorial Office, Cambridge, UK.
• PMID: 35792782
• DOI: 10.1111/febs.16565

Literature reviews are valuable resources for the scientific community. With research accelerating at an unprecedented speed in recent years and more and more original papers being published, review articles have become increasingly important as a means to keep up to date with developments in a particular area of research. A good review article provides readers with an in-depth understanding of a field and highlights key gaps and challenges to address with future research. Writing a review article also helps to expand the writer's knowledge of their specialist area and to develop their analytical and communication skills, amongst other benefits. Thus, the importance of building review-writing into a scientific career cannot be overstated. In this instalment of The FEBS Journal's Words of Advice series, I provide detailed guidance on planning and writing an informative and engaging literature review.

© 2022 Federation of European Biochemical Societies.

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Write a Critical Review of a Scientific Journal Article

What is a scientific journal, what is a critical review, more help with science writing.

• Analyzing the Text
• Writing Your Critique

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• Check out our full list of online writing resources These guides, templates, and videos are designed to help academic writers at various stages of their writing process, including the pre-writing and revising stages.

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A scientific journal is a publication intended to further the progress of scientific discovery by reporting novel research. Scientific journals publish both original research articles and review articles.

A critical review is an assessment of an original research article.  Writing a critical review of a journal article can help you improve your research skills. By assessing the work of others, you develop skills as a critical reader and become familiar with the types of evaluation criteria that will be applied to research in your field.

You are expected to read the article carefully, analyze it, and evaluate the quality and originality of the research, as well as its relevance and presentation. You should assess its strengths and weaknesses, followed by its overall value.

• Do not be confused by the term critique: it does not mean that you only look at the negative aspects of what the researchers have done. You should address both the positive and negative aspects of the journal article.
• If your instructor has given you specific advice on how to write a critical review, follow that advice. If not, the following steps may help you. 

This guide is divided into two parts. The first part, "Analyzing the Text," outlines the steps involved in evaluating a research article. The second part, "Writing Your Critique," discusses two possible ways to structure your review.​

• Developing a Research Question + Worksheet Use this worksheet to develop, assess, and refine your research questions. There is also a downloadable PDF version.
• Research Article Mapping Template This workbook provides writers with a mapping template and fillable worksheets to begin organizing and drafting sections of a research article.
• Organizing your Research Proposal - Template This 6-page fillable pdf handout provides writers with a template to begin outlining sections of their own research proposal.
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• Last Updated: Jan 11, 2024 12:42 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uoguelph.ca/WriteCriticalReview

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Original Research

How can i tell if the article is original research.

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What is Original Research?

Original research is considered a primary source.

An article is considered original research if...

• it is the report of a study written by the researchers who actually did the study.
• the researchers describe their hypothesis or research question and the purpose of the study.
• the researchers detail their research methods.
• the results of the research are reported.
• the researchers interpret their results and discuss possible implications.

There is no one way to easily tell if an article is a research article like there is for peer-reviewed articles in the Ulrich's database. The only way to be sure is to read the article to verify that it is written by the researchers and that they have explained all of their findings, in addition to listing their methodologies, results, and any conclusions based on the evidence collected. 

All that being said, there are a few key indicators that will help you to quickly decide whether or not your article is based on original research. 

• Literature Review or Background
• Conclusions
• Read through the abstract (summary) before you attempt to find the full-text PDF. The abstract of the article usually contains those subdivision headings where each of the key sections are summarized individually. 
• Use the checkbox with CINAHL's advanced search to only see articles that have been tagged as research articles.   
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• Last Updated: Feb 7, 2022 11:44 AM
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Home » Original Research – Definition, Examples, Guide

Original Research – Definition, Examples, Guide

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Original Research

Definition:

Original research refers to a type of research that involves the collection and analysis of new and original data to answer a specific research question or to test a hypothesis. This type of research is conducted by researchers who aim to generate new knowledge or add to the existing body of knowledge in a particular field or discipline.

Types of Original Research

There are several types of original research that researchers can conduct depending on their research question and the nature of the data they are collecting. Some of the most common types of original research include:

Basic Research

This type of research is conducted to expand scientific knowledge and to create new theories, models, or frameworks. Basic research often involves testing hypotheses and conducting experiments or observational studies.

Applied Research

This type of research is conducted to solve practical problems or to develop new products or technologies. Applied research often involves the application of basic research findings to real-world problems.

Exploratory Research

This type of research is conducted to gather preliminary data or to identify research questions that need further investigation. Exploratory research often involves collecting qualitative data through interviews, focus groups, or observations.

Descriptive Research

This type of research is conducted to describe the characteristics or behaviors of a population or a phenomenon. Descriptive research often involves collecting quantitative data through surveys, questionnaires, or other standardized instruments.

Correlational Research

This type of research is conducted to determine the relationship between two or more variables. Correlational research often involves collecting quantitative data and using statistical analyses to identify correlations between variables.

Experimental Research

This type of research is conducted to test cause-and-effect relationships between variables. Experimental research often involves manipulating one or more variables and observing the effect on an outcome variable.

Longitudinal Research

This type of research is conducted over an extended period of time to study changes in behavior or outcomes over time. Longitudinal research often involves collecting data at multiple time points.

Original Research Methods

Original research can involve various methods depending on the research question, the nature of the data, and the discipline or field of study. However, some common methods used in original research include:

This involves the manipulation of one or more variables to test a hypothesis. Experimental research is commonly used in the natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, but can also be used in social sciences, such as psychology.

Observational Research

This involves the collection of data by observing and recording behaviors or events without manipulation. Observational research can be conducted in the natural setting of the behavior or in a laboratory setting.

Survey Research

This involves the collection of data from a sample of participants using questionnaires or interviews. Survey research is commonly used in social sciences, such as sociology, political science, and economics.

Case Study Research

This involves the in-depth analysis of a single case, such as an individual, organization, or event. Case study research is commonly used in social sciences and business studies.

Qualitative research

This involves the collection and analysis of non-numerical data, such as interviews, focus groups, and observation notes. Qualitative research is commonly used in social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

Quantitative research

This involves the collection and analysis of numerical data using statistical methods. Quantitative research is commonly used in natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, as well as in social sciences, such as psychology and economics.

Researchers may also use a combination of these methods in their original research depending on their research question and the nature of their data.

Data Collection Methods

There are several data collection methods that researchers can use in original research, depending on the nature of the research question and the type of data that needs to be collected. Some of the most common data collection methods include:

• Surveys : Surveys involve asking participants to respond to a series of questions about their attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, or experiences. Surveys can be conducted in person, over the phone, through email, or online.
• Interviews : Interviews involve asking participants open-ended questions about their experiences, beliefs, or behaviors. Interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or through video conferencing.
• Observations : Observations involve observing and recording participants’ behaviors or interactions in a natural or laboratory setting. Observations can be conducted using structured or unstructured methods.
• Experiments : Experiments involve manipulating one or more variables and observing the effect on an outcome variable. Experiments can be conducted in a laboratory or in the natural environment.
• Case studies: Case studies involve conducting an in-depth analysis of a single case, such as an individual, organization, or event. Case studies can involve the collection of qualitative or quantitative data.
• Focus groups: Focus groups involve bringing together a small group of participants to discuss a specific topic or issue. Focus groups can be conducted in person or online.
• Document analysis: Document analysis involves collecting and analyzing written or visual materials, such as reports, memos, or videos, to answer research questions.

Data Analysis Methods

Once data has been collected in original research, it needs to be analyzed to answer research questions and draw conclusions. There are various data analysis methods that researchers can use, depending on the type of data collected and the research question. Some common data analysis methods used in original research include:

• Descriptive statistics: This involves using statistical measures such as mean, median, mode, and standard deviation to describe the characteristics of the data.
• Inferential statistics: This involves using statistical methods to infer conclusions about a population based on a sample of data.
• Regression analysis: This involves examining the relationship between two or more variables by using statistical models that predict the value of one variable based on the value of one or more other variables.
• Content analysis: This involves analyzing written or visual materials, such as documents, videos, or social media posts, to identify patterns, themes, or trends.
• Qualitative analysis: This involves analyzing non-numerical data, such as interview transcripts or observation notes, to identify themes, patterns, or categories.
• Grounded theory: This involves developing a theory or model based on the data collected in the study.
• Mixed methods analysis: This involves combining quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the research question.

How to Conduct Original Research

Conducting original research involves several steps that researchers need to follow to ensure that their research is valid, reliable, and produces meaningful results. Here are some general steps that researchers can follow to conduct original research:

• Identify the research question: The first step in conducting original research is to identify a research question that is relevant, significant, and feasible. The research question should be specific and focused to guide the research process.
• Conduct a literature review: Once the research question is identified, researchers should conduct a thorough literature review to identify existing research on the topic. This will help them identify gaps in the existing knowledge and develop a research plan that builds on previous research.
• Develop a research plan: Researchers should develop a research plan that outlines the methods they will use to collect and analyze data. The research plan should be detailed and include information on the population and sample, data collection methods, data analysis methods, and ethical considerations.
• Collect data: Once the research plan is developed, researchers can begin collecting data using the methods identified in the plan. It is important to ensure that the data collection process is consistent and accurate to ensure the validity and reliability of the data.
• Analyze data: Once the data is collected, researchers should analyze it using appropriate data analysis methods. This will help them answer the research question and draw conclusions from the data.
• Interpret results: After analyzing the data, researchers should interpret the results and draw conclusions based on the findings. This will help them answer the research question and make recommendations for future research or practical applications.
• Communicate findings: Finally, researchers should communicate their findings to the appropriate audience using a format that is appropriate for the research question and audience. This may include writing a research paper, presenting at a conference, or creating a report for a client or stakeholder.

Purpose of Original Research

The purpose of original research is to generate new knowledge and understanding in a particular field of study. Original research is conducted to address a research question, hypothesis, or problem and to produce empirical evidence that can be used to inform theory, policy, and practice. By conducting original research, researchers can:

• Expand the existing knowledge base: Original research helps to expand the existing knowledge base by providing new information and insights into a particular phenomenon. This information can be used to develop new theories, models, or frameworks that explain the phenomenon in greater depth.
• Test existing theories and hypotheses: Original research can be used to test existing theories and hypotheses by collecting empirical evidence and analyzing the data. This can help to refine or modify existing theories, or to develop new ones that better explain the phenomenon.
• Identify gaps in the existing knowledge: Original research can help to identify gaps in the existing knowledge base by highlighting areas where further research is needed. This can help to guide future research and identify new research questions that need to be addressed.
• Inform policy and practice: Original research can be used to inform policy and practice by providing empirical evidence that can be used to make decisions and develop interventions. This can help to improve the quality of life for individuals and communities, and to address social, economic, and environmental challenges.

How to publish Original Research

Publishing original research involves several steps that researchers need to follow to ensure that their research is accepted and published in reputable academic journals. Here are some general steps that researchers can follow to publish their original research:

• Select a suitable journal: Researchers should identify a suitable academic journal that publishes research in their field of study. The journal should have a good reputation and a high impact factor, and should be a good fit for the research topic and methods used.
• Review the submission guidelines: Once a suitable journal is identified, researchers should review the submission guidelines to ensure that their manuscript meets the journal’s requirements. The guidelines may include requirements for formatting, length, and content.
• Write the manuscript : Researchers should write the manuscript in accordance with the submission guidelines and academic standards. The manuscript should include a clear research question or hypothesis, a description of the research methods used, an analysis of the data collected, and a discussion of the results and their implications.
• Submit the manuscript: Once the manuscript is written, researchers should submit it to the selected journal. The submission process may require the submission of a cover letter, abstract, and other supporting documents.
• Respond to reviewer feedback: After the manuscript is submitted, it will be reviewed by experts in the field who will provide feedback on the quality and suitability of the research. Researchers should carefully review the feedback and revise the manuscript accordingly.
• Respond to editorial feedback: Once the manuscript is revised, it will be reviewed by the journal’s editorial team who will provide feedback on the formatting, style, and content of the manuscript. Researchers should respond to this feedback and make any necessary revisions.
• Acceptance and publication: If the manuscript is accepted, the journal will inform the researchers and the manuscript will be published in the journal. If the manuscript is not accepted, researchers can submit it to another journal or revise it further based on the feedback received.

How to Identify Original Research

To identify original research, there are several factors to consider:

• The research question: Original research typically starts with a novel research question or hypothesis that has not been previously explored or answered in the existing literature.
• The research design: Original research should have a clear and well-designed research methodology that follows appropriate scientific standards. The methodology should be described in detail in the research article.
• The data: Original research should include new data that has not been previously published or analyzed. The data should be collected using appropriate research methods and analyzed using valid statistical methods.
• The results: Original research should present new findings or insights that have not been previously reported in the existing literature. The results should be presented clearly and objectively, and should be supported by the data collected.
• The discussion and conclusions: Original research should provide a clear and objective interpretation of the results, and should discuss the implications of the research findings. The discussion and conclusions should be based on the data collected and the research question or hypothesis.
• The references: Original research should be supported by references to existing literature, which should be cited appropriately in the research article.

Advantages of Original Research

Original research has several advantages, including:

• Generates new knowledge: Original research is conducted to answer novel research questions or hypotheses, which can generate new knowledge and insights into various fields of study.
• Supports evidence-based decision making: Original research provides empirical evidence that can inform decision-making in various fields, such as medicine, public policy, and business.
• Enhances academic and professional reputation: Conducting original research and publishing in reputable academic journals can enhance a researcher’s academic and professional reputation.
• Provides opportunities for collaboration: Original research can provide opportunities for collaboration between researchers, institutions, and organizations, which can lead to new partnerships and research projects.
• Advances scientific and technological progress: Original research can contribute to scientific and technological progress by providing new knowledge and insights into various fields of study, which can inform further research and development.
• Can lead to practical applications: Original research can have practical applications in various fields, such as medicine, engineering, and social sciences, which can lead to new products, services, and policies that benefit society.

Limitations of Original Research

Original research also has some limitations, which include:

• Time and resource constraints: Original research can be time-consuming and expensive, requiring significant resources to design, execute, and analyze the research data.
• Ethical considerations: Conducting original research may raise ethical considerations, such as ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of research participants, obtaining informed consent, and avoiding conflicts of interest.
• Risk of bias: Original research may be subject to biases, such as selection bias, measurement bias, and publication bias, which can affect the validity and reliability of the research findings.
• Generalizability: Original research findings may not be generalizable to larger populations or different contexts, which can limit the applicability of the research findings.
• Replicability: Original research may be difficult to replicate, which can limit the ability of other researchers to verify the research findings.
• Limited scope: Original research may have a limited scope, focusing on a specific research question or hypothesis, which can limit the breadth of the research findings.

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Original Research

An original research paper should present a unique argument of your own. In other words, the claim of the paper should be debatable and should be your (the researcher’s) own original idea. Typically an original research paper builds on the existing research on a topic, addresses a specific question, presents the findings according to a standard structure (described below), and suggests questions for further research and investigation. Though writers in any discipline may conduct original research, scientists and social scientists in particular are interested in controlled investigation and inquiry. Their research often consists of direct and indirect observation in the laboratory or in the field. Many scientists write papers to investigate a hypothesis (a statement to be tested).

Although the precise order of research elements may vary somewhat according to the specific task, most include the following elements:

• Table of contents
• List of illustrations
• Body of the report
• References cited

Check your assignment for guidance on which formatting style is required. The Complete Discipline Listing Guide (Purdue OWL)  provides information on the most common style guide for each discipline, but be sure to check with your instructor.

The title of your work is important. It draws the reader to your text. A common practice for titles is to use a two-phrase title where the first phrase is a broad reference to the topic to catch the reader’s attention. This phrase is followed by a more direct and specific explanation of your project. For example:

“Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!: The Effects of Large Predators on Livestock Yields.”

The first phrase draws the reader in – it is creative and interesting. The second part of the title tells the reader the specific focus of the research.

In addition, data base retrieval systems often work with  keywords  extracted from the title or from a list the author supplies. When possible, incorporate them into the title. Select these words with consideration of how prospective readers might attempt to access your document. For more information on creating keywords, refer to this  Springer research publication guide.

See the KU Writing Center Writing Guide on Abstracts for detailed information about creating an abstract.

Table of Contents

The table of contents provides the reader with the outline and location of specific aspects of your document. Listings in the table of contents typically match the headings in the paper. Normally, authors number any pages before the table of contents as well as the lists of illustrations/tables/figures using lower-case roman numerals. As such, the table of contents will use lower-case roman numbers to identify the elements of the paper prior to the body of the report, appendix, and reference page. Additionally, because authors will normally use Arabic numerals (e.g., 1, 2, 3) to number the pages of the body of the research paper (starting with the introduction), the table of contents will use Arabic numerals to identify the main sections of the body of the paper (the introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references, and appendices).

Here is an example of a table of contents:

ABSTRACT..................................................iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS...............................iv

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...........................v

LIST OF TABLES.........................................vii

INTRODUCTION..........................................1

LITERATURE REVIEW.................................6

METHODS....................................................9

RESULTS....................................................10

DISCUSSION..............................................16

CONCLUSION............................................18

REFERENCES............................................20

APPENDIX................................................. 23

More information on creating a table of contents can be found in the Table of Contents Guide (SHSU)  from the Newton Gresham Library at Sam Houston State University.

List of Illustrations

Authors typically include a list of the illustrations in the paper with longer documents. List the number (e.g., Illustration 4), title, and page number of each illustration under headings such as "List of Illustrations" or "List of Tables.”

Body of the Report

The tone of a report based on original research will be objective and formal, and the writing should be concise and direct. The structure will likely consist of these standard sections:  introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion . Typically, authors identify these sections with headings and may use subheadings to identify specific themes within these sections (such as themes within the literature under the literature review section).

Introduction

Given what the field says about this topic, here is my contribution to this line of inquiry.

The introduction often consists of the rational for the project. What is the phenomenon or event that inspired you to write about this topic? What is the relevance of the topic and why is it important to study it now? Your introduction should also give some general background on the topic – but this should not be a literature review. This is the place to give your readers and necessary background information on the history, current circumstances, or other qualities of your topic generally. In other words, what information will a layperson need to know in order to get a decent understanding of the purpose and results of your paper? Finally, offer a “road map” to your reader where you explain the general order of the remainder of your paper. In the road map, do not just list the sections of the paper that will follow. You should refer to the main points of each section, including the main arguments in the literature review, a few details about your methods, several main points from your results/analysis, the most important takeaways from your discussion section, and the most significant conclusion or topic for further research.   

Literature Review

This is what other researchers have published about this topic.

In the literature review, you will define and clarify the state of the topic by citing key literature that has laid the groundwork for this investigation. This review of the literature will identify relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies between previous investigations and this one, and suggest the next step in the investigation chain, which will be your hypothesis. You should write the literature review in the  present tense  because it is ongoing information.

Methods (Procedures)

This is how I collected and analyzed the information.

This section recounts the procedures of the study. You will write this in  past tense  because you have already completed the study. It must include what is necessary to replicate and validate the hypothesis. What details must the reader know in order to replicate this study? What were your purposes in this study? The challenge in this section is to understand the possible readers well enough to include what is necessary without going into detail on “common-knowledge” procedures. Be sure that you are specific enough about your research procedure that someone in your field could easily replicate your study. Finally, make sure not to report any findings in this section.

This is what I found out from my research.

This section reports the findings from your research. Because this section is about research that is completed, you should write it primarily in the  past tense . The form and level of detail of the results depends on the hypothesis and goals of this report, and the needs of your audience. Authors of research papers often use visuals in the results section, but the visuals should enhance, rather than serve as a substitute, for the narrative of your results. Develop a narrative based on the thesis of the paper and the themes in your results and use visuals to communicate key findings that address your hypothesis or help to answer your research question. Include any unusual findings that will clarify the data. It is a good idea to use subheadings to group the results section into themes to help the reader understand the main points or findings of the research. 

This is what the findings mean in this situation and in terms of the literature more broadly.

This section is your opportunity to explain the importance and implications of your research. What is the significance of this research in terms of the hypothesis? In terms of other studies? What are possible implications for any academic theories you utilized in the study? Are there any policy implications or suggestions that result from the study? Incorporate key studies introduced in the review of literature into your discussion along with your own data from the results section. The discussion section should put your research in conversation with previous research – now you are showing directly how your data complements or contradicts other researchers’ data and what the wider implications of your findings are for academia and society in general. What questions for future research do these findings suggest? Because it is ongoing information, you should write the discussion in the  present tense . Sometimes the results and discussion are combined; if so, be certain to give fair weight to both.

These are the key findings gained from this research.

Summarize the key findings of your research effort in this brief final section. This section should not introduce new information. You can also address any limitations from your research design and suggest further areas of research or possible projects you would complete with a new and improved research design.

References/Works Cited

See KU Writing Center  writing guides  to learn more about different citation styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago.  Make an appointment  at the KU Writing Center for more help. Be sure to format the paper and references based on the citation style that your professor requires or based on the requirements of the academic journal or conference where you hope to submit the paper.

The appendix includes attachments that are pertinent to the main document but are too detailed to be included in the main text. These materials should be titled and labeled (for example Appendix A: Questionnaire). You should refer to the appendix in the text with in-text references so the reader understands additional useful information is available elsewhere in the document. Examples of documents to include in the appendix include regression tables, tables of text analysis data, and interview questions.

Updated June 2022  

ANSC 5220 : Types of Articles

Types of articles.

• Databases for Finding Articles
• Accessing Articles
• Website Evaluation
• Literature Review This link opens in a new window
• Citing Sources
• Class Exercise

This page provides a brief overview of different types of articles. For more complete information on criteria that can be used to evaluate journals, news sources and magazines consult the library guide on Distinguishing Scholarly from Non-Scholarly Periodicals  created by Michael Engle, a research librarian at Olin Library on Cornell's campus.

High Impact Journals

Here are just a few (of the thousands) scholarly journals in animal science and life sciences -- all of them available online through Cornell. Browsing the issues in journals in your field is just one more way to find articles -- just not a very efficient approach if you are looking for a very specific topic! 

Journal of Dairy Science

Journal of Mammalogy

PLoS Biology

Biological Reviews

Quarterly Review of Biology

Scholarly journals are also called academic, peer-reviewed, or refereed journals . Strictly speaking, peer-reviewed (also called refereed) journals refer only to those scholarly journals that submit articles to several other scholars, experts, or academics (peers) in the field for review and comment. These reviewers must agree that the article represents properly conducted original research or writing before it can be published.

To check if a journal is peer-reviewed/refereed, search the journal by title in Ulrich's Periodical Directory --look for the referee jersey icon. More on peer-reviewed journals from the University of Texas .

Trade journals are publications focused on a narrow subject, industry or profession. Trade publications can give you the perspective of a specific group of stakeholders. Articles tend to be brief and trade journals include color photographs and ads. Although some trade publications have the word "journal" in the title, they are not considered scholarly publications. Just a few examples of trade publications: Livestock ,  Advertising Age , Farm Journal , The Grocer .

Substantive News and General Interest publications vary in their format focus on providing information, in a general manner, to a broad, educated audience.  Some cite sources, most most do not. Articles may be written by a member of the editorial staff, a scholar or a free lance writer. In news sources, the author is listed as a byline. Authors of articles in this category are held accountable for their reporting.

Popular magazines come in many formats , although often slick and attractive in appearance with lots of color graphics (photographs, drawings, etc.). These publications do not cite sources in a bibliography. Information published in popular periodicals is often second or third hand and the original source is rarely mentioned. Articles are usually very short and written in simple language. The main purpose of popular periodicals is to entertain the reader, to sell products (their own or their advertisers), or to promote a viewpoint.

Article/publication types

In your research, there are many publication types that you will come across, each with different value in the research process.  

• Review - An article type that looks at other research in the field and summarizes that research for the reader.  High quality reviews will be systematic in nature in an effort to remove bias from the article selection process.  Look here for more details on different types of Review Articles:  https://guides.library.cornell.edu/evidence-synthesis/types 
• Original Research - A research study usually designed by the articles author(s).  Original Research articles will often have a methodology, results, and discussion sections to explain the study in detail.  They can be difficult to read at times because they will assume a base level of knowledge (including "jargon") in the field of study covered by the article. 
• Technical Reports - Technical Reports can vary widely, but often they offer a real world application to the research discussed in Reviews and Original Research articles.
• Trade Publications - Articles written for practitioners of a specific trade.  Trade publications are usually designed to quickly report on topics of importance in that field.  They are not usually as intensely researched or reviewed as most of the above publication types.
• Popular Publications - Articles written for the general public.  These articles are generally much easier to read than the above publication types. 
• Non-traditional publications  - For example, Blogs, social media posts or websites.  These are generally intended as a form of communication with minimal (if any) editorial processes.  While these can serve as a nice medium for communication of ideas and conversation, particularly if the author is an expert in the field, they generally will not be used in formal research-based practices and publications.
• Event Reporting - Simply reporting the facts of an event that has happened or is happening.  By far the least biased type of news content.
• Analysis - Using context to add some explanation for why events may be happening.
• Opinion/Editorial - Journalists/reporters offering their opinions about why events may be happening and what the significance may be of those events.  Opinions/Editorials are notoriously very biased, and should be used particularly cautiously. 
• Other/Features -  For example, profiles, interviews, press releases, investigative journalism. These are usually either primary in nature, or involve substantially more research than Analysis or Opinion/Editorials.  That said, these can still be very biased because authors can be very selective in what type of content they gather and use.

Primary vs. Secondary Research Articles

You've been asked to find at least one primary research article s. Primary sources in this case:

• are original scientific reports of new research findings
• usually include the following sections: Introduction , Methods , Results , Discussion, References
• are peer-reviewed (examined by expert(s) in the field before publication).

You may also choose to use some secondary sources (summaries or interpretations of original research) such as books (consult the E-Books section) or review articles (articles which organize and critically analyze the research of others on a topic).

These secondary sources are often useful and easier-to-read summaries of research in an area. Additionally, you can use the listed references to find useful primary research articles. See the E-Book tab in this ANSC guide to get more information on reference books that are useful for background information on a topic.

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• Last Updated: Oct 20, 2023 11:17 AM
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NURP 410: Advanced Research Methods: Research and Review Articles

• Help Videos
• Article Types
• Research and Review Articles
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• Types of Review Articles
• Evidence-Based Practice
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Here you will find descriptions, criteria, and examples of research and review articles.  Once you understand the differences between research and review articles, see the Qualitative and Quantitative Articles and Types of Review Articles pages for more information.

Research Articles

Research articles describe an original study that the author(s) conducted themselves.

They will include a brief literature review, but the main focus of the article is to describe the theoretical approach, methods, and results of the authors' own study.

Is it a Research Article?

Look at the abstract or full text of the journal article and consider the following:

• Was data collected?
• Were there surveys, questionnaires, interviews, interventions (as in a clinical trial)?
• Is there a population?
• Is there an outline of the methodology used?
• Are there findings or results?
• Are there conclusions and a discussion of the significance?

Research articles use a standard format to clearly communicate information about an experiment. A research article usually has 7 major sections:

• Introduction/Objective
• Discussion/Conclusion

A research article has a hypothesis, a method for testing the hypothesis, a population on which the hypothesis was tested, results or findings, and a discussion or conclusion.

Sample Research Articles

• Research Article Example A
• Research Article Example B

Review Articles

Review articles summarize the current state of research on a subject by organizing, synthesizing, and critically evaluating the relevant literature. They tell what is currently known about an area under study and place what is known in context. This allows the researcher to see how their particular study fits into a larger picture.

Review articles are NOT original research articles. Instead, they are a summary of many other original research articles. When your teacher tells you to obtain an "original research article"or to use a primary source, do not use an article that says review.

Is it a Review Article?

Review articles are NOT original research articles. Instead, they are a summary of many other original research articles. 

Look at the abstract or full text of the article and consider the following:

• Is it described as a review?
• Is there a search strategy outlined?
• Does the majority of the article focus on previous studies?

Sample Review Articles

• Review Article Example A
• Review Article Example B
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• Last Updated: May 13, 2024 10:11 AM
• URL: https://simmons.libguides.com/nurs410_online

ENGL 101/102

• Background information and exploring your topic
• Make a great research question

Finding original research articles

• Searching Syntax This link opens in a new window
• Citations Guide
• Does NJIT have it?
• Interlibrary Loan This link opens in a new window
• Assignment Tips

Finding Research Articles About Your Topic

What kind of research has been done on your topic? Where can you find original research articles that have been published in peer-reviewed journals?  Use this page to learn about sources for finding peer-reviewed original research articles . Also, learn about  the nature and characteristics of peer-reviewed and original research articles.

Best bets for Original Research Articles-- Library databases for ENGL102

<p>Also explore the <a href="https://researchguides.njit.edu/az.php">Library&#39;s AZ Database list </a>to find scholarly resources dedicated to specific subjects (Psychology, Education, Transportation, etc.)</p>

Also explore the Library's A-Z Database list to find scholarly resources dedicated to specific subjects (Psychology, Education, Transportation, etc.)

Understanding Peer Review and Original Research

Understanding what peer review is all about.

What is a peer-reviewed article anyways? What is the big deal about peer review? What is it? How does it work? Why do my instructors ask me to find peer-reviewed articles to use in my paper? If an article has been "Peer reviewed" it has earned a kind of authority and credibility from an academic/scientific community. It's a process that research has to go through before it is published. When we're talking about peer review, we're usually talking about scholarly and academic publications. They are usually original research -- research that's never been done before.  

Consult these sources to learn more about it:

Learn about peer review -- and its imperfections -- by watching All About Peer Review , a video from the CSUDH Library. Consult the Research Guide on Peer Review from NJIT Library to learn more. Watch Peer Review in 5 minutes from NCSU Library to learn more about the process of peer review and how to identify peer reviewed research. Read the information sheet What's the Difference? from Purdue University. Look over the peer-review process infographic on the LibGuide from UC San Diego. Want to learn more? Read Peer Review in Scientific Publications: Benefits, Critiques & A Survival Guide for an extensive and in-depth treatment of peer review including its history and problems.

What do peer-reviewed articles look like?

What do peer reviewed articles look like.

Probably the most known peer-reviewed journal is Nature . Take a look at the current issue of Nature -- notice that it has all kinds of articles of interest to a lot of people -- news, editorials, book reviews. Take a look at the "Research Articles" section. There you will see the peer reviewed articles from Nature such as: Physiological measurements in social acceptance of self driving technologies Modeling innovation in the cryptocurrency ecosystem Human preferences toward algorithmic bias in a word association task Notice that the articles have a "received" or "submitted", "accepted by" and "published" dates. These are the marking of peer reviewed articles -- finding these dates can be a quick and easy way of identifying peer-reviewed research. These articles also describe an original scientific study or experiment. They follow the scientific method and have sections with names like "Introduction", "Methodology", "Results", etc. Peer-reviewed articles often, but don't always, have multiple authors whose affiliations are given in the article.

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Literature Reviews

• Types of reviews
• Getting started

Types of reviews and examples

Choosing a review type.

• 1. Define your research question
• 2. Plan your search
• 3. Search the literature
• 4. Organize your results
• 5. Synthesize your findings
• 6. Write the review
• Artificial intelligence (AI) tools
• Thompson Writing Studio This link opens in a new window
• Need to write a systematic review? This link opens in a new window

Contact a Librarian

Ask a Librarian

• Meta-analysis
• Systematized

Definition:

"A term used to describe a conventional overview of the literature, particularly when contrasted with a systematic review (Booth et al., 2012, p. 265).

Characteristics:

• Provides examination of recent or current literature on a wide range of subjects
• Varying levels of completeness / comprehensiveness, non-standardized methodology
• May or may not include comprehensive searching, quality assessment or critical appraisal

Mitchell, L. E., & Zajchowski, C. A. (2022). The history of air quality in Utah: A narrative review.  Sustainability ,  14 (15), 9653.  doi.org/10.3390/su14159653

Booth, A., Papaioannou, D., & Sutton, A. (2012). Systematic approaches to a successful literature review. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

"An assessment of what is already known about a policy or practice issue...using systematic review methods to search and critically appraise existing research" (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 100).

• Assessment of what is already known about an issue
• Similar to a systematic review but within a time-constrained setting
• Typically employs methodological shortcuts, increasing risk of introducing bias, includes basic level of quality assessment
• Best suited for issues needing quick decisions and solutions (i.e., policy recommendations)

Learn more about the method:

Khangura, S., Konnyu, K., Cushman, R., Grimshaw, J., & Moher, D. (2012). Evidence summaries: the evolution of a rapid review approach.  Systematic reviews, 1 (1), 1-9.  https://doi.org/10.1186/2046-4053-1-10

Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries. (2021). Rapid Review Protocol .

Quarmby, S., Santos, G., & Mathias, M. (2019). Air quality strategies and technologies: A rapid review of the international evidence.  Sustainability, 11 (10), 2757.  https://doi.org/10.3390/su11102757

Grant, M.J. & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: an analysis of the 14 review types and associated methodologies.  Health Information & Libraries Journal , 26(2), 91-108. https://www.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x

Developed and refined by the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre), this review "map[s] out and categorize[s] existing literature on a particular topic, identifying gaps in research literature from which to commission further reviews and/or primary research" (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 97).

Although mapping reviews are sometimes called scoping reviews, the key difference is that mapping reviews focus on a review question, rather than a topic

Mapping reviews are "best used where a clear target for a more focused evidence product has not yet been identified" (Booth, 2016, p. 14)

Mapping review searches are often quick and are intended to provide a broad overview

Mapping reviews can take different approaches in what types of literature is focused on in the search

Cooper I. D. (2016). What is a "mapping study?".  Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA ,  104 (1), 76–78. https://doi.org/10.3163/1536-5050.104.1.013

Miake-Lye, I. M., Hempel, S., Shanman, R., & Shekelle, P. G. (2016). What is an evidence map? A systematic review of published evidence maps and their definitions, methods, and products.  Systematic reviews, 5 (1), 1-21.  https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-016-0204-x

Tainio, M., Andersen, Z. J., Nieuwenhuijsen, M. J., Hu, L., De Nazelle, A., An, R., ... & de Sá, T. H. (2021). Air pollution, physical activity and health: A mapping review of the evidence.  Environment international ,  147 , 105954.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2020.105954

Booth, A. (2016). EVIDENT Guidance for Reviewing the Evidence: a compendium of methodological literature and websites . ResearchGate. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.1562.9842 . 

Grant, M.J. & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: an analysis of the 14 review types and associated methodologies.  Health Information & Libraries Journal , 26(2), 91-108.  https://www.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x

"A type of review that has as its primary objective the identification of the size and quality of research in a topic area in order to inform subsequent review" (Booth et al., 2012, p. 269).

• Main purpose is to map out and categorize existing literature, identify gaps in literature—great for informing policy-making
• Search comprehensiveness determined by time/scope constraints, could take longer than a systematic review
• No formal quality assessment or critical appraisal

Learn more about the methods :

Arksey, H., & O'Malley, L. (2005) Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework.  International Journal of Social Research Methodology ,  8 (1), 19-32.  https://doi.org/10.1080/1364557032000119616

Levac, D., Colquhoun, H., & O’Brien, K. K. (2010). Scoping studies: Advancing the methodology. Implementation Science: IS, 5, 69. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-5-69

Example : 

Rahman, A., Sarkar, A., Yadav, O. P., Achari, G., & Slobodnik, J. (2021). Potential human health risks due to environmental exposure to nano-and microplastics and knowledge gaps: A scoping review.  Science of the Total Environment, 757 , 143872.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143872

A review that "[compiles] evidence from multiple...reviews into one accessible and usable document" (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 103). While originally intended to be a compilation of Cochrane reviews, it now generally refers to any kind of evidence synthesis.

• Compiles evidence from multiple reviews into one document
• Often defines a broader question than is typical of a traditional systematic review

Choi, G. J., & Kang, H. (2022). The umbrella review: a useful strategy in the rain of evidence.  The Korean Journal of Pain ,  35 (2), 127–128.  https://doi.org/10.3344/kjp.2022.35.2.127

Aromataris, E., Fernandez, R., Godfrey, C. M., Holly, C., Khalil, H., & Tungpunkom, P. (2015). Summarizing systematic reviews: Methodological development, conduct and reporting of an umbrella review approach. International Journal of Evidence-Based Healthcare , 13(3), 132–140. https://doi.org/10.1097/XEB.0000000000000055

Rojas-Rueda, D., Morales-Zamora, E., Alsufyani, W. A., Herbst, C. H., Al Balawi, S. M., Alsukait, R., & Alomran, M. (2021). Environmental risk factors and health: An umbrella review of meta-analyses.  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Dealth ,  18 (2), 704.  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18020704

A meta-analysis is a "technique that statistically combines the results of quantitative studies to provide a more precise effect of the result" (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 98).

• Statistical technique for combining results of quantitative studies to provide more precise effect of results
• Aims for exhaustive, comprehensive searching
• Quality assessment may determine inclusion/exclusion criteria
• May be conducted independently or as part of a systematic review

Berman, N. G., & Parker, R. A. (2002). Meta-analysis: Neither quick nor easy. BMC Medical Research Methodology , 2(1), 10. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-2-10

Hites R. A. (2004). Polybrominated diphenyl ethers in the environment and in people: a meta-analysis of concentrations.  Environmental Science & Technology ,  38 (4), 945–956.  https://doi.org/10.1021/es035082g

A systematic review "seeks to systematically search for, appraise, and [synthesize] research evidence, often adhering to the guidelines on the conduct of a review" provided by discipline-specific organizations, such as the Cochrane Collaboration (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 102).

• Aims to compile and synthesize all known knowledge on a given topic
• Adheres to strict guidelines, protocols, and frameworks
• Time-intensive and often takes months to a year or more to complete
• The most commonly referred to type of evidence synthesis. Sometimes confused as a blanket term for other types of reviews

Gascon, M., Triguero-Mas, M., Martínez, D., Dadvand, P., Forns, J., Plasència, A., & Nieuwenhuijsen, M. J. (2015). Mental health benefits of long-term exposure to residential green and blue spaces: a systematic review.  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ,  12 (4), 4354–4379.  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph120404354

"Systematized reviews attempt to include one or more elements of the systematic review process while stopping short of claiming that the resultant output is a systematic review" (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 102). When a systematic review approach is adapted to produce a more manageable scope, while still retaining the rigor of a systematic review such as risk of bias assessment and the use of a protocol, this is often referred to as a  structured review  (Huelin et al., 2015).

• Typically conducted by postgraduate or graduate students
• Often assigned by instructors to students who don't have the resources to conduct a full systematic review

Salvo, G., Lashewicz, B. M., Doyle-Baker, P. K., & McCormack, G. R. (2018). Neighbourhood built environment influences on physical activity among adults: A systematized review of qualitative evidence.  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ,  15 (5), 897.  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15050897

Huelin, R., Iheanacho, I., Payne, K., & Sandman, K. (2015). What’s in a name? Systematic and non-systematic literature reviews, and why the distinction matters. https://www.evidera.com/resource/whats-in-a-name-systematic-and-non-systematic-literature-reviews-and-why-the-distinction-matters/

• Review Decision Tree - Cornell University For more information, check out Cornell's review methodology decision tree.
• LitR-Ex.com - Eight literature review methodologies Learn more about 8 different review types (incl. Systematic Reviews and Scoping Reviews) with practical tips about strengths and weaknesses of different methods.
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Evidence-based Practice in Healthcare

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Hanna's Performing a qualitity literature review presentation slides

• Link to the PPT slides via OneDrive anyone can view

Characteristics of a Good Literature Review in Health & Medicine

Clear Objectives and Research Questions : The review should start with clearly defined objectives and research questions that guide the scope and focus of the review.

Comprehensive Coverage : Include a wide range of relevant sources, such as research articles, review papers, clinical guidelines, and books. Aim for a broad understanding of the topic, covering historical developments and current advancements. To do this, an intentional and minimally biased search strategy.

• Link to relevant databases to consider for a comprehensive search (search 2+ databases)
• Link to the video "Searching your Topic: Strategies and Efficiencies" by Hanna Schmillen
• Link to the worksheet "From topic, to PICO, to search strategy" to help researchers work through their topic into an intentional search strategy by Hanna Schmillen

Transparency and Replicability : The review process, search strategy, should be transparent, with detailed documentation of all steps taken. This allows others to replicate the review or update it in the future.

Appraisal of Studies Included : Each included study should be critically appraised for methodological quality and relevance. Use standardized appraisal tools to assess the risk of bias and the quality of evidence.

• Link to the video " Evaluating Health Research" by Hanna Schmillen
• Link to evaluating and appraising studies tab, which includes a rubric and checklists

Clear Synthesis and Discussion of Findings : The review should provide a thorough discussion of the findings, including any patterns, relationships, or trends identified in the literature. Address the strengths and limitations of the reviewed studies and the review itself. Present findings in a balanced and unbiased manner, avoiding over interpretation or selective reporting of results.

Implications for Practice and Research : The review should highlight the practical implications of the findings for medical practice and policy. It should also identify gaps in the current literature and suggest areas for future research.

Referencing and Citation : Use proper citation practices to credit original sources. Provide a comprehensive reference list to guide readers to the original studies.

• Link to Citation Style Guide, includes tab about Zotero

Note: A literature review is not a systematic review. For more information about systematic reviews and different types of evidence synthesis projects, see the Evidence Synthesis guide .

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What is a Peer-Reviewed Article and Where Can We Find It?

This article will look at what peer-reviewed articles are and why it’s considered necessary for ensuring academic scientific quality

To generate and communicate scientific knowledge, reviews of scholarly works are essential. Scholarship, particularly academic work, is evaluated by peer review.

High-impact articles are reviewed by expertly selective editors and published in exceptionally selective journals that publish articles that will have a significant impact within a field.  Peer review is intended to provide an expert’s thoughtful critique of an author’s contribution so that it can be published and disseminated without restriction. 

A peer-reviewed publication is sometimes called a scholarly publication. Performing peer review of scholarly papers, research, or proposals is considered necessary for ensuring academic scientific quality. In this article, we will look at what peer-reviewed articles are and how they can be beneficial.

What is The Main Purpose of a Peer-Reviewed Article?

There is a great deal of reliance on reviewers in academic publications. Peer review elevates academic publications, improves research quality, and helps research communities network. The peer review process has been a widely recognized and commonly used method for research validation.

The purpose of peer review in academic publishing is to assess the quality of articles made available for publication. Peer-reviewed journals require articles to undergo the following procedures before they can be published:

• Journal editors forward the articles to experts in the field after they receive submissions from authors. A peer review is conducted by someone who specializes in the same area as the author.
• The objective reviewers assess the submitted manuscripts meticulously for quality.
• Research methodology and procedures are evaluated by the peer reviewers for their validity.
• It is then suggested that revisions be made if necessary.
• Articles are rejected based on whether they lack academic credibility and quality.

An accepted peer-reviewed article is representative of quality research in a field since peer-reviewed journals will not publish articles that do not conform to the discipline’s standards.

What is The Best Way to Find Peer-Reviewed Articles?

If you are looking for peer-reviewed sources, you might want to start by looking through your library’s database. Libraries usually allow you to narrow your search and display only scholarly articles, but this isn’t always feasible.

Alternatively, you can glance at either the very beginning or very end of the entire journal to see if there is an editorial statement or author’s instructions. Journals will state whether they use peer-reviewing in their editorial statements or authors’ instructions. Peer-reviewed articles are also indicated on some journals’ respective websites.

The following strategies can be taken to ensure that your results are from peer-reviewed journals:

• Determine whether peer-reviewed articles are included in the database description.
• Choose Advanced Search when searching for articles. 
• Search results can be limited to peer-reviewed articles if you check a checkbox on the search screen.
• If you use a journal website, look for the link titled information for authors, instructions for authors, submitting articles, etc.

Articles published in peer-reviewed journals usually contain these factors. When conducting research for your dissertation, you should be able to identify peer-reviewed sources by using at least one of these methods. 

Is It Possible to Make Your A rticle More Quality by Adding More Details?

In the scientific community, peer-reviewed articles are like seals of approval for credibility and quality. The question is, how do you prepare your article to get it approved successfully?

Detail-oriented writing is important. Articles should be written chronologically with the appropriate headings and sections. Second, verify that the information has been substantiated by the right source. The third tip is to pay attention to the specifics and ensure that the writing is grammatically accurate.

A good amount of graphics, tables, and pictures are always good for captivating your peers. Discover how to simplify the process of making a research paper here: Research Paper: How to Write From Scratch in 5 Easy Steps .

With Mind The Graph , you can create stunning infographics to enhance the visual appeal of your articles. To learn more, please visit our website .

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About Aayushi Zaveri

Aayushi Zaveri majored in biotechnology engineering. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in Bioentrepreneurship from Karolinska Institute. She is interested in health and diseases, global health, socioeconomic development, and women's health. As a science enthusiast, she is keen in learning more about the scientific world and wants to play a part in making a difference.

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Chapter 10: Interpreting findings

Once you have described the different aspects of the studies in a review you need to think about “the bigger picture”. Exactly what this is will depend on the studies included in the review and the question the review set out to answer. In other words, the next step is to provide an interpretation of what the findings might mean, and your understanding of what you have found. There are two main aspects to this, addressing the review’s question or objectives and contextualising the review within the existing evidence.

The following questions should help you think about how to interpret a review’s findings.

Can you answer the research question?

You must address your research question (and/or research objectives). If you can’t answer the question, it is important to say so, and to say why you can’t.

You may be only able to answer the question tentatively, so you should include something about any uncertainties in your answer. If you are fortunate, you may be able to provide a definitive answer to your question. Frequently it is not possible, particularly if you have had to restrict the number of included studies for practical reasons. It is much more likely that you will need to give a qualified answer in some way. In doing so, you need to consider the constraints on the review and the quality of the evidence (determined through the critical appraisal of the included studies). This is all important information that can be used to guide both practice and future research.

What similarities and differences did you identify in the included studies?

Consider each characteristic recorded in your grid, such as the study design, the participants, how an intervention (or exposure) was defined, the way outcomes were measured, the study findings, and the quality appraisals .

What are the overall findings from the review?

Keep in mind that the overall findings of the review are not restricted to the findings reported in the included studies. For example, your findings could include the identification of important gaps in existing research and/or practice.

• Did you identify any gaps (or, what information was missing that you needed to answer your research question)?
• How might the findings affect current practice? Should any existing practices change or be modified in any way?
• What should future research on this topic consider to address these gaps?

What is the nature of the evidence provided by the review?

• What are the strengths of the review? (or, what is good about the review)
• What are the limitations of the review? (or, what are the shortcomings of the review)

Example: Answering the review’s question

The art therapy example [1] , has an implied research question in its title –  Is art therapy effective?  While this question doesn’t specify any population group or the outcomes that will be used to determine effectiveness, the information provided in Tables 1a and 1b (above), is sufficient to answer the question in the following way:

Four randomized controlled studies, published between 1971 and 1996, assessed the effectiveness of art therapy included in the review. The review found that art therapy may be effective at improving self-perceptions among school students but there was no evidence that art therapy improved behavioural or mental health outcomes for children or adolescents experiencing these issues. However, the quality of evidence is unclear as quality appraisals were not reported.

Contextualising review findings

Ideally the findings of any review should be compared to what is already known about the topic. The best way to do this is to look at the findings of any existing reviews that have looked at the same or similar questions if available. While there can be quite distinct differences in how reviews on the same topic are conducted, even when the same approach has been used in different review, more recent searches are more likely to find newer studies that may affect the overall evidence.

Activity: What to look for…

When looking at another published review on your review topic to see how the other authors have approached the tasks of the review. It can help to do before you start your review. Already published reviews can be used as models for a new review – in terms of what to do, what to avoid, and for ideas on how to present information. Consideration of existing published reviews in this way, can be included in the background section of your review to justify why it is needed.

In comparing reviews, it is useful to compare the search timeframe used, the databases searched, and the inclusion and exclusion criteria used. When comparing your completed review, check to see how, or if, the reviews overlap in any way, particularly in terms of the studies included, the data extracted, and interpretation of study findings. You should include a comparison of your findings with those findings of published reviews in the discussion section of your review.

How does the published systematic review compare to your proposed review?

The following questions can help you decide if a published review has been done well, what is unclear and what could have been done better.

• What is the research question and/or research objectives? How does it compare with the question/objectives of your review?
• What study populations were included in the review? Do you know how many study participants were involved across all studies?
• What “interventions” or “exposures” of interest were included?
• What comparisons were made?
• What outcomes were measured/reported?
• What study designs did the authors include? How many studies were included in the final review? How many of these provided data?
• Were the included studies appraised? If so how was this done? How does this differ from your approach?
• Did the authors of the published systematic review answer their question (or meet the research objectives)?
• Apart from the review question were there any other important findings?
• What did the review authors conclude? Did they identify any important gaps in research?
• Does the review(s) raise any issues you hadn’t thought about?

Strengths and limitations of reviews

The strengths and limitations of the studies included in a review may be reported in the review findings, particularly if study quality is affected. However, these are different from the strengths and limitations of the review itself. Reviews are considered one of the strongest sources of evidence, so it is critical for review authors to reflect and report on the strengths and weaknesses of their actual reviews.

Strengths commonly reported in reviews include: extensive search strategies, the inclusion of high quality studies, findings consistent with or builds on results of previous reviews; findings consistent across included studies, transparent review processes ensure robust and replicable approach, provides important overview of topic, identifies important policy or methodological issues;

Limitations of reviews frequently refer to inadequate number of study numbers, differences in definitions and the outcomes measured across included studies, or poor study quality.

• Reynolds, M. W., Nabors, L., & Quinlan, A. (2000). The effectiveness of art therapy: Does it work? Art Therapy, 17(3), 207-213. DOI: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07421656.2000.10129706 . ↵

Process for judging the quality of a research paper. https://latrobe.libguides.com/criticalappraisal

Practical introduction to writing reviews and reports in health research Copyright © by Dell Horey; Fernanda Nava Buenfil; and Joanne Marcucci is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Content and form of original research articles in general major medical journals

Nicole heßler.

1 Institut für Medizinische Biometrie und Statistik (IMBS), Universität zu Lübeck, Universitätsklinikum-Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany

Andreas Ziegler

2 Cardio-CARE, Medizincampus Davos, Davos, Switzerland

3 School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, University of KwaZulu Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

4 Department of Cardiology, University Heart and Vascular Center Hamburg, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

5 Centre for Population Health Innovation (POINT), University Heart and Vascular Center Hamburg, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

6 Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Lausanne, Switzerland

Associated Data

All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

The title of an article is the main entrance for reading the full article. The aim of our work therefore is to examine differences of title content and form between original research articles and its changes over time. Using PubMed we examined title properties of 500 randomly chosen original research articles published in the general major medical journals BMJ, JAMA, Lancet, NEJM and PLOS Medicine between 2011 and 2020. Articles were manually evaluated with two independent raters. To analyze differences between journals and changes over time, we performed random effect meta-analyses and logistic regression models. Mentioning of results, providing any quantitative or semi-quantitative information, using a declarative title, a dash or a question mark were rarely used in the title in all considered journals. The use of a subtitle, methods-related items, such as mentioning of methods, clinical context or treatment increased over time (all p < 0.05), while the use of phrasal tiles decreased over time (p = 0.044). Not a single NEJM title contained a study name, while the Lancet had the highest usage of it (45%). The use of study names increased over time (per year odds ratio: 1.13 (95% CI: [1.03‒1.24]), p = 0.008). Investigating title content and form was time-consuming because some criteria could only be adequately evaluated by hand. Title content changed over time and differed substantially between the five major medical journals. Authors are advised to carefully study titles of journal articles in their target journal prior to manuscript submission.

Introduction

Researchers have the duty to make the results of their research on human subjects publicly available according to the declaration of Helsinki [ 1 ], and many recommendations for the reporting of studies have been developed. An overview on these reporting guidelines is provided by the EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) network, which aims to tackle the problems of poor reporting [ 2 ]. One consequence of systematic reporting is that many scientific articles are organized in the same way [ 3 , 4 ], and they generally follow the IMRAD structure, which stands for Introduction, Methods, Results, And Discussion. The IMRAD structure is also standard for the writing of abstracts. It is therefore of interest to researchers how they can individualize their reports to increase the citation counts, which is one important measure for career advancement [ 5 ].

Approximately 30 factors affecting citation frequency have already been identified [ 6 – 9 ]. While journal- and author related factors are generally not modifiable, some article-specific factors are subject to active modification by the authors. Especially the title has been proposed as a modifiable component of a research article [ 9 – 11 ]. Researchers should use titles that accurately reflect the content of their work and allow others easily to find and re-use their research [ 12 ]. Most research has focused on the form of article titles because these analyses could be performed automatically and are not very time-consuming [ 9 , 13 , 14 ].

While the article content has been studied well both in features, such as tense, voice and personal pronouns, and in the IMRAD sections between different research disciplines, title content has received less attention, and the main focus was title length [ 15 , 16 ]. One reason could be the lack of automated internet searches until approximately 25 years ago. For example, PubMed was first released in 1996, Web of Science is online since 1997 and Google Scholar started not earlier than in 2004. With the advent of automated internet-based searches the importance of the title has changed, and it is now the “billboard” of a research article [ 17 ]. Another reason could be that these evaluations have to be made manually, and they are thus time-consuming [ 18 ]. An additional time-consuming factor could be that guidelines such as the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) statement [ 19 ] strongly recommend that at least two observers should do an independent evaluation where applicable.

Most articles investigating the form of the title compared whether the title was a full sentence [ 20 ], descriptive, indicative, or a question [ 18 , 21 ], or whether the title included non-alphanumeric characters, such as a colon or dash [ 22 ]. Very few publications looked at other title components of a research article. Specifically, Kerans, Marshall [ 23 ] compared the frequency of Methods mentioning or Results mentioning for the general major medical journals, specifically the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the BMJ, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the Lancet by analyzing the first approximately 60 articles published either in 2015 or 2017 in each of the journals. Both articles investigated only a few months from a single publication year per journal. The development of title content over time was thus not considered.

The aim of our work therefore was to examine properties of title content for original research articles published in one of the five major clinical journals (BMJ, JAMA, Lancet, NEJM, and PLOS Medicine (PLOS)) over the 10-year period from 2011 until 2020. Specifically, we aimed at identifying differences between the five journals and changes over time regarding title content and title form. We also compared our findings to those of Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ].

Materials and methods

Search in medline and web of science.

The search strategy has been described in detail elsewhere [ 9 ]. In brief, we first extracted all original research articles finally published between 2011 and 2020 in the five major clinical journals BMJ, JAMA, Lancet, NEJM, and PLOS. The restriction to the publication year 2011 allows for proper comparisons between journals because PLOS was reshaped in 2009 [ 24 ].

The variables PubMed identifier (PMID), journal name, article title, author names, publication year, citation, PubMed Central identifier (PMCID) and digital object identifier (DOI) were extracted from the Medline search. From the Web of Science, we reduced available information to journal name, article title, PMID, abstract for the identification of original research articles, DOI and publication date. Both PMID and DOI were used to merge articles identified in Medline (n = 8396) and the Web of Science (n = 10267). Articles being listed with an abstract remained in the data set, while articles only listed in the Web of Science were excluded. Articles being only downloaded in the Medline files were checked whether they were indeed original research articles. If not, they were excluded as well. After data cleaning, a set of 8096 articles was available.

Evaluation of title content and form

To investigate title content and form, we randomly selected 500 original articles from the years 2011 to 2020. The random selection was done with stratification by journal and year so that ten original articles per year (100 articles per journal) were randomly chosen. To avoid a priori information on the specific journal article, only the title and the PMID were presented in the database. In addition, the order of the 500 articles was randomized prior to evaluation. All article titles were evaluated manually by two raters/authors. Both raters performed a training and independently evaluated 25 randomly selected journal articles—five per journal—prior to the evaluation of the 500 articles. These training articles were excluded from the main evaluation. Conflicts in ratings were solved by agreement.

Items for title content and form are displayed in Table 1 and were inspired by other works [ 15 , 25 , 26 ]. One reviewer asked for the discoverability in each of the title items, therefore, we provided two examples of article titles with the result of our evaluation in Table 1 .

The first block of Table 1 reports results on title content. Title content was divided into the topics Methods and Results. The former is concerned with the mentioning of methods in the title, such as the study design or a novel technique used in the paper [ 15 ]. Other elements from the methods concern the mentioning of a patient population, the geography, the clinical context, an intervention, and the use of study names in the title. The latter examines results mentioned in the manuscript. The first question was whether results were stated in the title at all. More detailed were the questions whether quantitative information or semiquantitative or ordinal information was provided [ 26 ]. It was also noted whether the title reported on a relation between two or more variables [ 26 ].

The second block of Table 1 is related to the form of a title divided into the topics Methods, and Conclusion/Discussion. The use of abbreviations, dashes and subtitles was investigated for the Methods. The three single items for Conclusion/Discussion were whether the title was declarative, phrasal, or formulated as a question.

Recently, we performed an analysis after an automatic search for country and city mentioning in the title by the use of the R package maps [ 9 ], and we did not expect substantial differences to our hand search.

Sample size considerations

The main aim of our work was to investigate trends over time by a regression model. In general, regression models have a sufficient sample for a single independent variable, such as time, if n ≈ 50 [ 27 , 28 ]. Specifically, for a weak effect size of R 2 = 0.14 [ 29 ], the required sample size is 51. In case of a weak effect size of Cohen’s f [ 29 ] with f 2 = R 2 / (1 –R 2 ) = 0.14, the required sample size is 403 to achieve a power of 80%. A sample size of 500 as used in our work yields a power of 87.75% at a significance level of 5%.

Descriptive statistics for the specified title properties, i.e., absolute and relative frequencies were reported for each journal over time, refraining of descriptive p-values for investigating journal differences. Fisher’s exact tests were performed at a significance level of 5% to compare the findings of this study with those of Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ] regarding methods mentioning, patient population, geography, clinical context, and treatment. Corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) were provided. Furthermore, overall tests were performed to compare frequencies of these items between all journals. Bias-corrected Cramérs V effect measures were estimated with corresponding parametric bootstrapped CIs. The DerSimonian and Laird [ 30 ] (DSL) approach was used to perform random effect (RE) meta-analyses, which allows for variability in the variables of interest properties between journals and over time. The logit transformation was used for estimating the pooled proportions [ 31 ], and standard errors were not back-transformed.

The effect of time regarding the specific title properties was investigated by logistic regression models, if appropriate. Post hoc comparisons for the identification of homogeneous subgroups were performed using Tukey’s HSD. Associations between title properties and the journals were analyzed using likelihood ratio tests. Effect estimates, i.e., odds ratios and corresponding 95% CI were reported for all analyses, and the journal BMJ was used as reference category. An odds ratio of x.x being greater than 1 indicates an x.x fold increased chance containing the specific item for an one-year difference adjusted for the variable journal.

Data and R code for all analyses are provided in S1 and S2 Files , respectively.

A total of 500 randomly selected original research articles from 5 medical journals were analyzed regarding the selected title items (see Table 1 ) . In Table 2 , the descriptive statistics, i.e., absolute and relative frequencies for all title properties over the years are shown, respectively for each journal. Results of the meta-analyses are provided in detail in S3 File , sections 4 and 5 .

Absolute and relative frequencies (parenthesis) are shown.

JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, NEJM: The New England Journal of Medicine, PLOS: PLOS Medicine.

Items–Content

In terms of the title content topic methods, the NEJM deviated from the other journals regarding the methods mentioning. While methods were mentioned in at least 93% of the article titles in BMJ, Lancet and PLOS, about the half (47%) was in JAMA and 11% in NEJM article titles. Similar results were reported by Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ] for BMJ, JAMA and Lancet, but proportions differed between Lancet titles ( Table 3 ). The mentioning of methods increased over time (OR: 1.12 (95% CI: [1.01‒1.24]), p = 0.025, Fig 1 and S3 File , section 6.1.1 ), i.e., methods were mentioned more frequently in the article titles more recently.

Displayed are odds ratios (square) per increase by one year, corresponding 95% confidence intervals (whisker) and p-values (numbers).

Corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) are shown in brackets. Results of PLOS Medicine are missing because Kerans et al. did not examine article titles of this journal.

JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, NEJM: The New England Journal of Medicine. 1 p-values from Fisher exact test; frequencies were compared within a journal for the respective variable. 2 Cramérs V (bias-corrected); CIs calculated by bootstrapping (normal approximation, 100 replications), 3 p-values from Fisher-Freeman-Halton exact test; frequencies were compared between all journals within the respective study

Lowest and highest numbers for the mentioning of the patient population were in the BMJ (62%) and the NEJM (78%), respectively. For the mentioning of the patient population, neither an increase over time (OR: 1.06 (95% CI: [0.99‒1.13]), p = 0.100, Fig 1 ) nor substantial differences between the journals ( S3 File , section 6.1.2 ) could be observed.

About half of the PLOS titles (52%) contained any geographic information, but only 31% of the BMJ titles (see Table 2 ). Frequencies were only 16% and 17% for JAMA and Lancet, respectively, and 9% for NEJM titles. These findings are in line with Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ], except for the BMJ, where Kerans et al. observed that 15.8% of the articles mentioned geographic information ( Table 3 ). Mentioning of geographic information varied over time both within each journal ( S3 File , section 4.1.3.1) and over the journals ( S3 File , section 4.1.3.2 ). This is consistent with the results from the logistic regression analysis (OR: 1.07 (95% CI: [0.99‒1.16]), p = 0.072, Fig 1 and S3 File , section 6.1.3 ).

The clinical context was mentioned in 73% of BMJ titles, while it was mentioned at least 80% in the other four journals. This is in line with Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ] ( Table 3 ). Additionally, we observed an increase of clinical context mentioning over time (OR: 1.10 (95% CI: [1.01‒1.19]), p = 0.025, Fig 1 and S3 File , section 6.1.4 ).

Only 27% in PLOS and 30% in BMJ provided some treatment information in the title, while for the other three journals at least 50% of the article titles mentioned a treatment. Our results did not show any differences from those of Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ] ( Table 3 ). Over time the naming of treatments in the title increased (OR: 1.08 (95% CI: [1.02‒1.16]), p = 0.015, Fig 1 and S3 File , section 6.1.5 ).

There was no NEJM title containing a study name while Lancet had the highest usage of it (45%). The analysis over time showed a trend over time (OR: 1.13 (95% CI: [1.03‒1.24]), p = 0.008) and substantial differences between the journals ( S3 File , section 6.1.6 ).

Regarding the title topic results, only 6 out of the total of 500 articles mentioned results in their titles. This is in line with the findings of Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ], who reported that 1.9% of NEJM titles mentioned results. No article provided any quantitative information in its title, and only 4 of 500 articles provided semi-quantitative information in their title. Because of very low numbers, no further analyses were performed for these criteria.

A relation between variables was used least frequently in the NEJM (23%), followed by the Lancet (35%). The other three journals mentioned a relation in more than half of the articles ( Table 2 ). These differences between journals were confirmed in regression analysis ( S3 File , section 6.2.4 ). However, an increase over time could not be observed (p = 0.858, Fig 1 ).

Items–Form

In terms of the title form topic methods, abbreviations were less used in NEJM titles and most used in Lancet titles, 24% and 55 respectively (see Table 2 ). An increase use over time was observed (OR: 1.13 (95% CI: [1.05‒1.20]), p < 0.001, Fig 1 ) as well as differences between journals ( S3 File , section 7.1.1) .

Dashes were rarely used. Only three articles in BMJ and two articles in NEJM used a dash ( Table 2 ). Further analyses were not performed because of these low frequencies.

A subtitle was used in at least 98% of the articles in BMJ, Lancet, and PLOS, while only 41% of JAMA titles and only 2% of NEJM titles used subtitles. These clear differences between the journals were confirmed with the regression analysis ( S3 File , section 7.1.2 ). Moreover, the usage of subtitles increased over time (OR: 1.22 (95% CI: [1.07‒1.38]), p < 0.003 , Fig 1 ).

Finally, regarding the title form topic discussion, not a single article had a declarative title in our analyses ( Table 2 ). Phrasal titles were present in 3% of JAMA, 7% of NEJM, 11% of BMJ, 12% of Lancet, and 15% of PLOS titles. Significant differences between journals could not be observed ( S3 File , section 7.2.2 ). A decrease of phrasal titles over time was observed in the regression analysis (OR: 0.90 (95% CI: [0.81‒1.00]), p < 0.044, Fig 1 and S3 File , section 7.2.2 ).

Only three of 500 article titles were written as a question ( Table 2 ). Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ] observed similar low frequencies; and they reported 3.9% for the BMJ and 1.3% for Lancet articles with a question symbol, and none for both JAMA and NEJM ( Table 3 ).

Geographic information–Manual versus automated search with the maps package

The comparison of our hand search on the mentioning of geographic information revealed substantial differences to the automated search with the R package maps [ 9 ].

In detail, respectively, 31% vs. 13% for BMJ, 16% vs. 3% for JAMA, 17% vs. 9% for the Lancet, 9% vs. 3% for the NEJM and 52% vs. 29% for PLOS articles contained any geographical information in their titles for the hand and automatic search. The automated search thus led to fewer titles with any geographic information.

Title content properties varied substantially between original research articles published in the general major medical journals. Furthermore, title content and form changed over time. Differences between journals were specifically observed in the use of subtitles. While almost all articles from the BMJ and PLOS had subtitles, only two of the NEJM articles had a subtitle. Previously, we and others showed that the colon was most used in titles to split a title into multiple parts rather than any other separator [ 9 , 15 , 23 ]. Here, we furthermore showed that the proportion of paper with subtitles increased over time.

Substantial differences between journals were also observed for the mentioning of methods, the patient population, the geography, the interventional treatment, and the use of an abbreviation in the title. In addition, there were substantial differences in the use of a study name in the title. For example, while no article published in the NEJM used a study name, almost half (45%) of the studies in the Lancet used one. Some content criteria were mainly not or rarely used in all considered journals, such as a dash, mentioning of results, using a declarative title, or a question mark. This was in contrast to Paiva, Lima [ 32 ] who showed for PLOS and BMC journals that approximately 40% of the articles mentioned the results, and such articles were more frequently cited than work mentioning methods. In our study, only 6 articles out of 500 mentioned results in the title, while 344 out of the 500 articles mentioned of methods. Our findings are in line with general guidelines that declamatory titles, i.e., titles that give study results should be avoided [ 33 ]; see, e.g., instructions to authors for the Lancet. Authors should thus avoid providing quantitative or semi-quantitative information in the title. In fact, since the title is a one-line summary, the conclusions could be spread out into the world without reading at least the abstract or the full text of the article. Aleixandre-Benavent and colleagues go a step further and provide recommendations what a title should contain, and how it should not be constructed [ 16 ].

Our work focused on the general major medical journals plus the online only journal PLOS. Between the printed journals, there were substantial differences regarding the content of article titles [ 9 ]. One of the reasons could be in the instructions for authors, which differ in the provided information on the construction of a title. Specifically, the NEJM title had the lowest number of frequencies for a couple of criteria, such as the subtitle, methods mentioning, geography, abbreviations, and relation. No NEJM title contained a study name. However, the clinical context and the patient population was most frequently described in NEJM article titles. Differences between printed and online journals were obvious using geographic information in the title or usage of a phrasal title occurring more often in the online journal PLOS.

Subtitles are now more frequently used than a decade ago. Furthermore, the mentioning of methods increased in the 10 years from 2011 to 2020. This change in the title may be caused by the increased use of reporting guidelines, such as the CONSORT statement [ 34 ], which states that a randomized controlled trial should be identifiable as randomized in the title. The instructions for authors of all considered journals state that subtitles should be used for reporting the study design and/or authors should follow the respective reporting guidelines of their study. In fact, authors should look out a copy of the target journal and identify its preferences [ 35 ].

Our results are in line with the recommendations from the journal-specific instructions for authors, except NEJM. The NEJM does not follow the CONSORT statement using subtitles for randomized controlled trials, see also [ 1 ]. For the other four journals, the mentioning of the study design or the type of analysis is almost always done using subtitles as recommended. Furthermore, our results for JAMA using no declarative titles, no results mentioning or using questions in the title match with its recommendations.

Research has so far concentrated on the form of article titles rather than its content. While some authors investigated title content in BMJ, JAMA, Lancet and NEJM for a specific time, generally a single year [ 15 , 23 , 36 ], the development of title content over time has rarely been studied [ 37 ]. A strength of our work thus is the availability of all original articles over a time span of 10 years [ 9 ]. From this database, we randomly selected a subset of articles for manual assessment. These articles were evaluated by two raters according to a pre-specified coding plan with examples and training. Title evaluations were then done blinded by year and journal.

We did not expect different journal-specific frequencies regarding the geographic information in the title compared to our recent work [ 9 ], in which we performed an automatic search for country and city mentioning in the title by the use of the R package maps [ 9 ]. However, frequencies differed substantially. The automated search led to fewer titles with any geographic information. For example, the maps package did not contain countries, such as ‘England’, continents, abbreviation, such as ‘U.S.’, or terms, such as ‘English’. The main reasons for the discrepancies were for the use of country-specific abbreviations and additional country-specific terms. However, other tools or packages might have been more appropriate for the geographical query than the maps package.

One limitation of our study is that we relied on the quality of the data provided by the PubMed database [ 38 ]. Another limitation of our work is that additional variables could have been considered, e.g., more complex title content [ 12 , 16 , 22 ].

A further limitation is the sample size of 500 articles, i.e., 10 articles per journal and year. With a sample size substantially larger than 1000 articles we would have been able to study the association of title characteristics with citation counts. For example, the total sample size of our previous study, which was based on an automated search was 8096 articles [ 9 ]. With 500 articles, 95% confidence intervals are approximately 4 times larger (√8096 / √500 = 4.02), and many results, such as the association between the number of citations would not have been significant. The sample size used in this study is approximately twice that of [ 15 , 23 ], and this study with 500 articles was powered to reliably detect trends over time.

In future research, it would be of interest to analyze the effect of title content properties on citation frequencies. It would also be interesting to compare specific journals with general medical journals.

In conclusion, title content differed substantially between the five major medical journals BMJ, JAMA, Lancet, NEJM and PLOS. Furthermore, title content changed over time. We recommend that authors study titles of articles recently published in their target journal when formulating the manuscript title. Analyses of title content may generally require manual time-consuming inspections.

Supporting information

Funding statement.

The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Data Availability

• PLoS One. 2023; 18(6): e0287677.

Decision Letter 0

10 Apr 2023

PONE-D-23-07021Title Content and Form of Original Research Articles in High-Ranked Medical JournalsPLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

The major concerns from the reviewers include the sample size, sample selection, and writing style.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

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Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

Reviewer #4: Yes

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Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This article analyses the titles of articles published in a series of medical journals over time. It is interesting for a consideration of how naming practices affect discoverability and use of research material.

There are, though, a few aspects that need revision:

First, the title of this paper makes reference to “high ranked” medical journals, but there is no definition anywhere of how this ranking is constructed or to what ranking you are referring.

Second, the sample size of 500 is relatively small and limits the general applicability of the findings, as the paper notes. I am unclear as to whether this is too small to be useful/generalizable.

Third, some of the limitations could have been overcome with different computational methods. For example, on page 14 you state that the maps package that you used was not able correctly to identify many locations in article headings. However, other named-entity recognition tools would certainly do a better job of this. For instance, Amazon Comprehend or SageMaker could be appropriate tools here.

Fourth, the language needs careful checking throughout. For instance: “can only adequately [be] measured”; “articles meaning no sentence and no question”; “we did neither observe” → “we observed neither”; “almost the half” → “almost half”.

Fifth, and perhaps most significantly, it would be helpful for the conclusions of this paper to interpret the findings more closely. Why have these changes that you find occurred? What does it mean that subtitles are now more common? How does discoverability work in each of the title types to which you refer?

Finally, you open by stating that the prime driver of picking a good title is so that you can pick up citations and have career progression. This seems a very cynical way of thinking about how to title articles. Scientists and medics should use titles that accurately reflect the content of the work and allow others easily to find and re-use their research. I would suggest amending this opening to incorporate such a stance.

Reviewer #2: The paper titled “Title Content and Form of Original Research Articles in High-Ranked Medical Journals” investigates the differences of title content and form between papers in the medical field and their changes over time. Overall, the paper is well-written and well-argued. The methodology is adequate, and there are an overall coherence and relation to the scope of publication in the Plos One journal. In addition, this manuscript addresses a very interesting issue about the analysis of titles and does so in a very competent technical way. It Is worth mentioning that data and R code are shared.

I do however have a major issue (which in fact, is a minor one). The authors did a huge effort in sharing all the data; however, the results section sometimes it's difficult to follow (the reader should go back and forth checking the tables). I think some (introductory) sentences in some parts of the manuscript will benefit the readability of the text (see my suggestions below).

I will go slightly more into detail with them in the position-specific comments below.

I think the paper would benefit by including some keywords related to the titles (e.g. research article titles or titles). I have reservations about the use of ‘impact’ (I think the authors are not analysing the impact of the papers, e.g. citation impact).

The introduction and background is ok, providing the necessary information leading to the purpose of the study. However, I think the authors could expand a bit more (there are more studies on the topic). See my suggestions below.

P10|Line 56. Indicate that the EQUATOR Network is referred to the reporting health research (e.g. Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) Network).

P10|Line 33 (and P11|Line 83). “content has rarely been investigated beyond title length”. I slightly disagree with this statement. From a bibliometric perspective, there are many articles that analyse impact (e.g. effect on citations, downloads), sentence types (e.g. informative), the information the author wants to include, and in which order, among others. I would like to suggest the following papers (not included by the authors):

• Aleixandre-Benavent, R., Montalt-Resurecció, V., & Valderrama-Zurián, J. C. (2014). A descriptive study of inaccuracy in article titles on bibliometrics published in biomedical journals. Scientometrics, 101(1), 781–791. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1296-5 .

• Ball, R. (2009). Scholarly communication in transition: The use of question marks in the titles of scientific articles in medicine, life sciences and physics 1966–2005. Scientometrics, 79(3), 667–679. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1984-5 .

• Busch-Lauer, I.-A. (2000). Titles of English and German research papers in medicine and linguistics theses and research articles. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Analysing professional genres (pp. 77–94). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.74.08bus

• Buter, R. K., & van Raan, A. F. J. (2011). Non-alphanumeric characters in titles of scientific publications: An analysis of their occurrence and correlation with citation impact. Journal of Informetrics, 5(4), 608–617. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2011.05.008 .

• Haggan, M. (2004). Research paper titles in literature, linguistics and science: Dimensions of attraction. Journal of Pragmatics, 36(2), 293–317. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166 (03)00090-0

• Nagano, R. L. (2015). Research article titles and disciplinary conventions: A corpus study of eight disciplines. Journal of Academic Writing, 5(1), 133–144. https://doi.org/10.18552/joaw.v5i1.168

• Pearson, W. S. (2021). Quoted speech in linguistics research article titles: patterns of use and effects on citations. Scientometrics, 126(4), 3421-3442.

P10|Line 75. Worth mentioning the Web of Science (1997) which includes the title field tag.

P11|Line 79. Indicate the acronym (Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD)). When the authors mention ‘at least two observers should do an independent evaluation where applicable”. Are referring to the article title? (not clear)

P11|Line 84. Correct typo “(2020)compared”.

P12|106-108. The authors mention “Articles being listed with an abstract remained in the data set, while articles only listed in the Web of Science were excluded.”. I suggest indicating the number of papers. Was the abstract used for any purpose?

P12|111. Indicate in this section that ten original articles per year (100 articles per journal) were randomly chosen.

There is a lot of information in this section (Tables and supplementary material), which allows the reproducibility of the findings. However, I think some introductory sentences will benefit the readability of the text (see my suggestions below).

P14|159-160. Although the information is in the Supplementary Material, I suggest introducing a few words (just one or two sentences) about Table 2 (or Descriptive Statistics).

In Table 3, the Plos Medicine journal information is missing in the table.

P14|159-160 “About half of the PLOS titles (52%) contained any geographic information”: missing this information in Table 3 (or indicate the Supplementary table in which this information is displayed).

P16|203. Correct typo ‘ofKerans’.

P16|207. Here, the authors mention the Results/Relation (and not the previous ones, i.e. Results mention, Quantitative information or Semi-quantitative information). I suggest an introductory sentence indicating that ‘In terms of results, etc’. And also pointing out that the other previous items were rarely used.

P16|214. Regarding this information (24%), indicate in brackets Table 2 (or 3.2. Supplementary Table)

P16|224. Indicate that refers to the discussion/conclusion part.

Discussion/Conclusions

Line 19|278-279. Another aspect that should be considered is the title length allowed by each journal (number maximum of words). Also there is of interest the recommendations from the journals (e.g. in the author guidelines). In some journals there is some criteria such as ‘Specific, descriptive, concise, and comprehensible to readers outside the field’ (Plos One), whereas in others it is suggested to include a subtitle (e.g. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/pages/instructions-for-authors ).

Line 20 |321. Another limitation is the variables considered (e.g. some other studies analyse other non-alphanumeric elements such as exclamations, other criteria for the content, etc.)

Line21|333. A sentence about further research could be included.

Reviewer #3: • There was a desire to look at characteristics within journals over time but use of only 10 articles per year seems subject to selection bias for this research question. What was the power consideration here?

• It is not clear how the titles were evaluated. Was it an automated program or each one manually? The samples size is small enough that manual adjudication is possible.

• Line 115. This is confusing. Results are not given for harmonization of classification of various title attributes.

• Reporting of ORs is confusing. For example on line 170, what is the OR for? The proportion listing method per year? Similar in line 188 – you say the rate varied over time, but you used logistic regression assuming an increase over time?

• The results section includes discussion points (like line 202).

• Were any findings linked back to author instructions for each journal? These often dictate title content.

• Linking the metrics assessed to citation counts would add an important dimension to the significance of this research.

• There is too much repetition of p values in the Discussion. I assume these were not presenting new analyses not shown in the results. It is not appropriate. Line 312 – they do report new analyses. It should be part of the study of not (unless published elsewhere).

• The Discussion is too long.

• The recommendation near the end that authors study titles in their target journals before submission is unfounded. Title is often dictated by author guidelines or changed during peer review. They did not study this particular question – in other words, they did not study title of rejected compared to accepted articles.

Reviewer #4: This study applies what are in my opinion very sound methodologies to analyze the titles of prestigious, general medical journals. The paper is well-written, and its significance lays on going beyond other studies in investigating titles’ form & content and the development of title content over time. To do so, they had to select a representative sample of articles over a period of 10 years. Having two (trained) raters made the methodology strong, as it was the methodology followed in the “Evaluation of title content and form” section. (I have to admit, however, that I lack the expertise to say that the statistical analyses have been performed appropriately and rigorously. So in the following I assume these have been done correctly.) By following this well-crafted methodology, and providing all the relevant data, the code to analyze it, and in detail results in the supplementary materials, the conclusions arrived at are well supported (see some comments below, though) and could be replicated by others.

I do have some specific concerns or comments that I would like the authors to address:

1. I think the authors should stick to the wording “general major medical journals” instead of “highly ranked” as they don’t define which “rank” that is or where it can be found or calculated.

2. Mentioning of guidelines for authors writing the papers in the journals analyzed was not mentioned at all ---even as it is mentioned in the literature they quote. I think this is important as to it may be determining why authors use a particular way to phrase the title. The reader is left to assume that no guidance was provided by the journal that could have biased title wording. I think this to be particularly important for the use or avoidance of abbreviations, dashes, and/or subtitles.

3. The authors recommendation “We recommend that authors study titles of articles recently published in their target journal when formulating the manuscript title” does not seem supported other than by their results implying this is what you find in them already. So, why should you follow the same? Would that make it more likely to be published? The paper’s introduction makes reference to increasing citation frequency in databases, and so does at least one of the authors’ previous papers, yet it’s never mentioned explicitly as a possible outcome of choosing title according to the journal to submit.

4. Regarding their recommendation “In our opinion, authors should avoid providing quantitative or semi-quantitative information in the title. In fact, since the title is a one-line summary, the conclusions could be spread out into the world without reading at least the abstract or the full text of the article. ”I think this argument should expand as to what the consequences are in following this behavior e.g. propagation of misinformation.

5. In their statement “Another limitation of our study is that we relied on the quality of the data provided by the database of PubMed. Specifically, we may have missed some original articles in our database search. And we have previously identified a couple of errors in the database (Heßler and Ziegler, 2022).” One shouldn’t expect the reader to go their paper for finding out what was wrong with those hits/articles.

6. Finally, author AZ declares, in the competing interests field, that he's a "licensed Tim Albert trainer and has held several courses in the past based on Albert’s concept." Please consider adding the statement that (at least some of the) Tim Albert trainings deal with advising people how to write medical papers.

P.S. There are a few typos, like missing words and letters, that need to be corrected throughout the manuscript.

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Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #4: No

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Author response to Decision Letter 0

22 May 2023

See separate document

Submitted filename: Response_to_Reviewers_V01.pdf

Decision Letter 1

12 Jun 2023

Title Content and Form of Original Research Articles in General Major Medical Journals

PONE-D-23-07021R1

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Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: All comments have been addressed

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Reviewer #4: (No Response)

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Acceptance letter

15 Jun 2023

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Nanostructure of interlayers in different Nicalon fibre/glass matrix composites and their effect on mechanical properties (English)

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Interlayer phenomena, revealed by high‐voltage electron microscopy (HVEM) and high‐resolution electron microscopy (HREM), are presented as they occur in various SiC(Nicalon) fibre‐reinforced Duran glass composites (differing in the specific sol‐gel supported production processes). Their dependence on the production parameters and their influence on the materials properties are discussed, taking into account the results of scanning electron microscope (SEM) in situ tensile tests.

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• Title: Nanostructure of interlayers in different Nicalon fibre/glass matrix composites and their effect on mechanical properties
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