Research Article vs. Review Article

An overview of types of scholarly articles

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Welcome to A Hitchhikers Guide to Publishing Research Articles!💡.

This is the second in a series of articles to help you launch your research dream. In this one, we are going to discuss the different types of scholarly articles and how they differ from each other.

There are many different types of scholarly articles, but for this blog, we will focus on two of the most common ones i.e. a research paper and a review paper. Let’s begin with the first one i.e. Research Articles :)

Research Articles

A research article’s main motive is to paint a good picture of how particular research has been implemented by its author(s). It explains the methodology of the study, such as how data was collected and analyzed along with clarifying what the results mean. It contained a detailed reporting of each step of the study so that other researchers can repeat the experiment. The work presented in the article is necessarily an original work by the author(s). The kind of research may vary depending on your field or the topic (experiments, survey, interview, questionnaire, etc.), but authors need to conduct an original study.
The best way to determine if the paper is a research article is to examine its wording. Research articles describe actions taken by the researcher(s) during the experimental process. Look for statements like “we tested,” “I measured,” or “we investigated”. Research articles also describe the outcomes of studies. Check for phrases like “the study found” or “the results indicate”.

Research papers are divided into sections that occur in a particular order: abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and references. You can take a deeper look into these various sections and what they constitute below for one of my research articles.

Fig 1: Image describing sections of research article-1 (Created by author)

Fig 2: Image describing sections of research article-2 (Created by author)

Review Articles

Unlike a research article that describes an original study, a review article gives an overview of a specific subject by examining previously published studies on the topic. Review papers form valuable scientific literature as they summarize the findings and then try to make sense of the findings of existing literature. In particular, review articles look at whether the outcomes of the chosen studies are similar, and if they are not, attempt to explain the conflicting results. By interpreting the findings of previous studies, review articles are able to present the current knowledge and understanding of a specific topic. Furthermore, review articles are a useful starting point for a research project because their reference lists can be used to find additional articles on the subject and if you did not come across any such recent review article in your field of interest, then why not go ahead and publish one yourself!

You can take a deeper look into the various sections and what they constitute below for one of my review articles.

Fig 3: Image describing sections of review article-1 (Created by author)

Fig 4: Image describing sections of review article-2 (Created by author)

Fig 5: Image describing sections of review article-3 (Created by author)

That’s all folks for this blog. I hope you have a great experience preparing your first research article!

Happy Researching!😄

References:

1. https://www.concordia.ca/library/guides/exercise-science/review-vs-research.html
2. https://www.editage.com/insights/5-differences-between-a-research-paper-and-a-review-paper