Welcome to our research community! Each month, our Research Ambassadors dive into a new and exciting research article, sharing their insights, reflecting and discussing together in our WhatsApp community. This is a space for learning, asking questions, and exploring research in and informal and supportive way. This blog post summarises the key takeaways from our latest journal club discussion.
This month’s featured article:
This month, Research Officer Beth shared some material gathered from the research team around ‘Reading and Critically Appraising an Article’.
In our Journal Club Feedback Survey for 2025, research ambassadors shared that they would benefit from learning a bit more about how to read an article, they posed questions such as: ‘What is the best way to read an article?’ and ‘Are there any tips for skim reading an article when you do not have much time?’ We thought this would be a good opportunity to share some material that has helped our team in the past.
If you would like to look at some of the material we explored this month, please visit the websites below:
- Being critical: Reading academic articles
- CASP Critical Appraisal Checklists
- How to Read a Scholarly Article: Quick Tips for Reading Strategies
- How to Read a Scholarly Article: Home
- How to read an academic article
- How to read academic research quickly
Key discussion points:
To start this month’s discussion, Beth provided the research ambassadors with 2 questions to have a think about when reading the material:
- What is one thing you have learnt about reading a journal article?
- What is one thing you are still unsure about reading a journal article?
This prompted great discussion from our ambassadors. Some of their key learnings and continuing uncertainties included:
Key learnings:
- Not needing to read everything in an article: ambassadors shared learnings about the different sections of an article and that an article does not always need to be read in order (from abstract to discussion).
- Value and reliability of research: our ambassadors flagged the importance of not only the research findings, but in how they are applied in practice.
Continuing uncertainties:
- Complex and jargon filled research articles: there was discussion about academic articles that can be difficult to read and understand when they are unstructured and contain a lot of jargon.
- Evaluating the quality of research methods: ambassadors shared how they found it difficult to evaluate the appropriateness and reliability of research methods in complex articles.
Ambassador insights:
What did our research ambassadors say?
“I think previously I felt that I needed to read everything in order. Reading the discussion section probably summarises the results and evaluates the method quite well… is anyone else scared to skip through parts of an article for fear of missing something important?” – Molly
“One thing I’ve learnt about reading an article is the importance of considering potential bias and the overall reliability of a study… one thing I’m still unsure about is how to evaluate the quality of a study when the methods or analysis are more complex…” – Elli
“One thing I have learned reading a journal article is to not read everything in the article” – Maria
“I agree with Maria that there’s value in not feeling like you have to read everything in an article. When I was studying and reading articles, I often put myself under pressure to understand everything in an article […] Now I really try to take a step back and read an article with an open mind” – Kate
“It is something very daunting to find the right one. I used to only read the title, method section, and conclusion to find if it’s related to my search. I also skim through the paper to see if there are any relation with my topic. I also agree with Elli, evaluating the quality of a research paper, I also find challenging” – Munia
“It’s reassuring to see in academia how they discuss or investigate topics in a more manageable way whilst acknowledging certain limitations… one thing I struggle with is the fatigue of reading academic articles, particularly those with lots of jargon and less structure” – Katie
Valuing our journal club:
It’s been great to kick off the start of this year exploring different techniques, tips and tricks for reading a journal article. Throughout the year as we engage with more academic content, hopefully we can put our strengths into practice and work on some of our uncertainties too.
Our Journal Club is open to all our Research Ambassadors, it is a space for curiosity, sharing knowledge, and asking questions to build our confidence reading academic articles. You do not need to have experience in reading articles, just an interest in hearing about new topics!
If you are looking for more information on research or our Research Ambassador Network, please contact our Research Officer Joe Pearce.