Science Article Summary
The advances in all fields of science seem to come at an exponential rate. What we study today may be modified or amended tomorrow just as much of today's knowledge is rooted in the past. An educated person reads throughout an entire lifetime. Articles should be from a respectable source such as:
Scientific American, Discover, Science News, Natural History, Smithsonian, Bioscience, or other similar journals. The articles should also be relevant to a topic we have or will study in this class. You can use
EbscoHost to access many scientific journals.
Process
- Search the Library ’s collection of science articles, to find scholarly or peer-reviewed articles. With the permission of your teacher, you may use an article you find on the internet. Please check with your teacher before summarizing an article you find on the internet. Each article should be a main article and not an editorial, summary, or other minor article from the journal.
- Read the entire article. Many science articles can be quite complex and use complicated wording and statistics. You may need to read the article a few times before you get a full grasp of it.
- This is an upper-level science course, and you are expected to write using appropriate grammar, sentence structure and formatting. You are also expected to use your own words when summarizing, do not plagiarize!
- All summaries should be more than 350 words and not exceed 750 words.
Writing
Name:_________________ Class:________________
Date:__________________ Dr. Croom
Article Summary
Citation:
You should use the Journal Scientific American which is accessible through
EBSCOhost
Write a citation for the journal article at the top of the review. The citation should follow the APA or MLA manual for citations. Use
http://citationmachine.net to make sure your citations are appropriate. You will need the title of the article, the journal where the article is published, the volume and issue number, publication date, author's name and page numbers for the article.
In the sections below cite any direct quotes or paraphrases from the article in-line. Use the author's name, the year of publication and the page number (for quotes) in the in-text citation. Refer to the link in the Resources section to do this correctly.
Summary:
Write a summary of the article. This should be one to three paragraphs, depending on the length of the article. Include the purpose for the article, how research was conducted, the results and other pertinent information from the article. This needs to be in your own words.
Discussion:
Discuss the meaning or implication of the results of the study that the article is about. This should be one to two paragraphs. This is where you offer your opinion on the article. Discuss any flaws with the article, how you think it could have been better and what you think it all means.
In this section discussing how the author could expand on the results, what the information means in the big picture, what future research should focus on or how future research could move the topic forward.
Opinion:
With your perspective as a Physics Student, discuss the quality of the article with regard to its relevance, importance, readability, interest level, and scientific content. Explain why you would or would not recommend it to the other members of your class.
This process is based on:
- http://www.ehow.com/how_4796768_write-article-review-apa-style.html#ixzz1YJv87nCb
- http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/article_summary.html
- http://chemistry.gcsu.edu/~metzker/RubricsGuidelines/ArticleSummary.pdf
- http://chemistry.gcsu.edu/~metzker/RubricsGuidelines/ArticleSummaryGuidelines.pdf
- http://chemistry.gcsu.edu/~metzker/RubricsGuidelines/ArticleSummaryRubric.pdf
