General Biology Laboratory

• Abstract - provides a summary of the article
• Introduction - includes background information and a description of the author's purpose
• Materials and Methods - details about how the study was performed with enough detail so that other scientists could repeat the study
• Results - includes new observations, data and findings, and figures
• Discussion - a description of what the findings mean and their implications
• References

Peer review is a process by which scholarly publications try to ensure "quality control," that what they publish is accurate and meets the standards of research and writing in their field.

When a scholar submits a book to a university press, or an article to a scholarly journal, the editor will send it out to two (usually) reputable scholars in the author's field to evaluate whether it meets the standards of historical research and whether it contributes anything new to the field. These are the peer-reviewers--because they are considered the author's peers (or equals) in the field--and if they approve of the manuscript, the published work will be considered "peer-reviewed."

We recommend that the articles you find be peer-reviewed, and therefore check the peer-review box when you do your article research. University press books are normally considered to be peer-reviewed.

Scholarly Articles Checklist

Primary Sources

• Written by scientists who perform the experiments
• These articles include original research data and a methods section explaining how experiments were done
• Examples: journal articles, theses, conferences, (governmental) reports, patents

Secondary Sources

• Summarize or compare lots of research in a particular area (e.g., a review)
• In a review article, graphs, tables, or figures containing actual data will contain citations in the figure legend to the primary research papers that originally reported the findings
• Examples: review journals, literature/article reviews, data compilations