If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways: Get help with access Institutional accessĪccess to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. Other tips for reading between the lines are presented. The second most important words are those in the abstract, which gives the conclusion reached by the study investigators. The most important words in any paper are the few represented in the title of the manuscript. You have to infer that from what is not said. Authors are not inclined to tell you what they did not do. But, when reading, you must be as mindful of what is not there as you are of what is there. If you want to understand the results, you have to understand how they were generated, and for that, you have to comb through the methods section, line by line. This chapter argues that when reading journal articles, the methods section of a results paper is the most important part. In everyday life, we usually ignore the “fine print”, but that can be a mistake when reading research papers. Indeed, it is likely that the only persons reading them from beginning to end are the authors, referees, and copy editors. Results papers are akin to reference books in that they are not meant to be read like novels, from cover to cover.
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