How I Read Science Research Papers and Journal Articles without Dying of Confusion

I’ll say it, research papers and journal articles are exhausting. Most of them, anyway. You may use other words like boring, complicated, meh, or ugh. I’m pretty sure the feeling is the same regardless.

The reality remains that journals demand a certain standard from researchers, which means that writing style isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. As a young scientist or early career researcher, one of your major responsibilities is staying up to date with trends in your field and writing reviews or contributing to papers. The more articles you bookmark and download, the more you feel overwhelmed.

Some journal articles tell you to read other journal articles by scanning through the abstract, methods, and conclusion before a deep dive. While that isn’t bad advice, it doesn’t solve the problem of complexities. So, here’s what I’m doing as a first-year PhD student to stay afloat in the sea of jargon, information, and technicalities.

My Cheatsheet to Reading Journal Articles and Easing Comprehension

1. Clearly state the questions that need answers

My research is focused on breast cancer genomics. That means I’m interested in everything related to breast cancer and genomics analysis on any genetic disease. If you go ahead and search for breast cancer genomics online, I guarantee you’ll find nothing less than a million related research papers.

Is that scary or what?

Instead of scaring myself to death, I take a different, more effective route. For instance, if I was trying to write a literature review, I start with an outline of potential subtopics. For each subtopic, I list the questions I want to answer based on very specific points, like how many types of breast cancer exist and what’s the differentiating factor. Or are there any recent records of new genes associated with breast cancer?

The more specific your question, the easier it is to determine if you need generic results or an advanced search on a science database like PubMed Central to filter based on the publication date or something else.

2. Read from layman’s websites

I picked this up from being a business content writer. For every technical concept out there, someone has taken the time to simplify it in an elaborate and engaging way. In my case, sites like medical news today, Healthline, and Cancer.gov have thousands of content pages written by experts with laymen as the target audience. They don’t just simplify and explain but also make sure to link to actual research papers for interested readers.

When I start to sound like a robot in my head, I visit these sites, read the simplified version of my topic of interest, make notes of interesting points, and bookmark the referenced journal articles. This helps me form my argument without the temptation to lift sentences from research papers out of frustration.

Here’s one example.

I was trying to create a presentation on my project topic by discussing the history of breast cancer and linking it to my research objectives. Before I entered my search query on Google, I knew for sure that reading an actual journal article would mess me up, so the first and only page I visited was Healthline’s history of breast cancer. From this page, I had access to papers, statistics pages, and other information that was just perfect. The resulting presentation was approximately 400 words.

3. Search with layman’s terms on any search engine

Remember the first point about breast cancer genomics? That’s vague and extremely wide. Instead of that, I often try something like, “the problem with triple negative breast cancer” The only jargon in that question is the actual term I’m trying to understand.

The idea here is these search engines were built to satisfy you. They want to give you the most trustworthy and straightforward answer within milliseconds. In layman’s terms, you’ll almost always find direct answers.

Go ahead and try it.

Then open a different search engine, like Bing or Firefox (my default is Chrome) and try it again. You can even tweak it and use abbreviations, like, “the problem with TNBC.” What do you see?

Different snippets of straightforward answers that are pretty much saying the same thing but citing different papers. This means more references to build your argument in your review or whatever you’re writing and higher enthusiasm to actually read a paper from start to finish because you know exactly what you’ll find.

In contrast, being generic and jargony gives you too many things to explore and reduces the chances of quickly finding something solid and useful.

4. Use AI

It’s impossible to talk about simplicity these days without mentioning AI, so here you go. ChatGPT, Wiseone, SciSpace, and Google Alerts, are my AI tools for now; all are free to use. ChatGPT is a Q&A platform, so the quality of the answers you get always depends on the quality of your questions. That means you’ll probably have to regenerate answers a couple of times before you find your sweet spot. One flaw: whatever answers you get here will need verification because the free version has a limited knowledge base.

Scispace summarises research papers based on sections: methods, results, abstract, etc. It already has inbuilt prompts, so once you signup and install the Chrome extension, you’re set. Simply open the journal article, activate the extension, and ask it to explain whatever section that interests you. It also goes ahead to tell you the limitation of a paper as well as its contribution to knowledge and potential future directions.

Wiseone is a know-it-all that gladly explains every complex word on a page to you if your mouse pointer hovers. Like scispace, it also requires signing up and installing the Chrome extension. The obvious downside to Wiseone is if you’re not careful, you’ll get lost reading definitions instead of reading the actual paper.

Google alerts don’t necessarily simplify papers, but if you subscribe to the right keywords, you’ll know when someone else has simplified a complex research paper in the form of a blog post or science article. For instance, if you subscribe to gene editing or CRISPR, you’ll get an email notification for new content online, like this one I recently published on Sciworthy about gene editing.

You’ll notice I didn’t make AI number one. That’s because though they may be getting close, they still don’t stand a chance next to the human brain. So, whatever AI tells you, confirm the authenticity and validity. At least for now.

5. Search by tools

Genomics analysis has multiple steps, all of which require specific tools or software packages. Chances are your lab or supervisor already has a preferred set of tools for whatever research you’re doing.

One way to understand research papers is to approach them with the intention of understanding a particular tool (or tools). In many cases, the original papers describing a new tool or product don’t do them enough justice. Some even focus more on the product’s mathematical, programming, or engineering detail, which, let’s be honest, is just meh and ugh.

Instead of torturing myself, I use Pubmed Central advanced search to specifically search for papers that mention those tools within their body. In those papers, I read the methods and results interpretation sections first, read again from start to finish, and then search for any supplementary materials to give more meaning to the paper.

This method justifies the existence and usefulness of a particular tool and, at the same time, helps you make sense of what would’ve been a turnoff if you weren’t interested in the tool.

And that’s a wrap.

If I try something new that works, I’ll update this piece.