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How to Summarize a Journal Article

In this Article:Article SummaryReading the ArticlePlanning a DraftWriting Your SummarySample

SummariesCommunity Q&A

Summarizing a journal article is the process of presenting a focused overview of a

completed research study that is published in a peer-reviewed, scholarly source. A
journal article summary provides potential readers with a short descriptive commentary,
giving them some insight into the article's focus. Writing and summarizing a journal
article is a common task for college students and research assistants alike. With a little
practice, you can learn to read the article effectively with an eye for summary, plan a
successful summary, and write it to completion.

Part1
Reading the Article
1.
 1
Read the abstract. Abstracts are short paragraphs written by the author to summarize
research articles. Abstracts are usually included in most academic journals and are
generally no more than 100-200 words. The abstract provides a short summary of the
content of the journal article, providing you with important highlights of the research
study.
 The purpose of an abstract is to allow researchers to quickly scan a journal and see if
specific research articles are applicable to the work they are doing. If you're collecting
research on immune system responses in rodents, you'll be able to know in 100 words
 not only whether or not the research is in your field, but whether the conclusions back
up your own findings, or differ from it.
 Remember that an abstract and an article summary are two different things, so an
article summary that looks just like the abstract is a poor summary.[1] An abstract is
highly condensed and cannot provide the same level of detail regarding the research
and its conclusions that a summary can.[2]
2.

2
Understand the context of the research. Make sure you know what specifically the
authors will be discussing or analyzing, why the research or the topic matters, whether
 or not the article is written in response to another article on the topic, etc. By doing this,
you'll learn what arguments, quotes, and data to pick out and analyze in your summary.
3.

3
Skip to the conclusion. Skip ahead to the conclusion and find out where the proposed
research ends up to learn more about the topic and to understand where the
complicated outlines and arguments will be leading. It's much easier to comprehend the
information if you read the researchers' conclusions first.
 You still need to go back and actually read the article after coming to the conclusion, but
only if the research is still applicable. If you're collecting research, you may not need to
 digest another source that backs up your own if you're looking for some dissenting
opinions.
4.

4
Identify the main argument or position of the article. To avoid having to read
through the whole thing twice to remind yourself of the main idea, make sure you get it
right the first time. Take notes as you read and highlight or underline main ideas.
 Pay special attention to the beginning paragraph or two of the article. This is where the
author will most likely lay out their thesis for the entire article. Figure out what the thesis
 is and determine the main argument or idea that the author or authors are trying to
prove with the research.
 Look for words like hypothesis, results, typically, generally, or clearly to give you hints
about which sentence is the thesis.
 Underline, highlight, or rewrite the main argument of the research in the margins. Keep
yourself focused on this main point, so you'll be able to connect the rest of the article
back to that idea and see how it works together.
 In the humanities, it's sometimes more difficult to get a clear and concise thesis for an
article because they are often about complex, abstract ideas (like class in post-modern
poetics, or feminist film, for example). If it's unclear, try to articulate it for yourself, as
best as you can understand the author's ideas and what they're attempting to prove with
their analysis.
5.
 5
Scan the argument. Continue reading through the various segments of the journal
article, highlighting main points discussed by the authors. Focus on key concepts and
ideas that have been proposed, trying to connect them back to that main idea the
authors have put forward in the beginning of the article.
 Different areas of focus within a journal article will usually be marked with sub-section
titles that target a specific step or development during the course of the research study.
The titles for these sub-sections are usually bold and in a larger font than the remaining
text.
  Keep in mind that academic journals are often dry reading. Is it absolutely necessary to
read through the author's 500 word proof of the formulas used in the glycerine solution
fed to the frogs in the research study? Maybe, but probably not. It's usually not essential
to read research articles word-for-word, as long as you're picking out the main idea, and
why the content is there in the first place.
6.

6
Take notes while you read. Efficiency is key when you're doing research and
collecting information from academic journals. Read actively as you comb through the
 material. Circle or highlight each individual portion of the journal article, focusing on the
sub-section titles.[3]
 These segments will usually include an introduction, methodology, research results, and
a conclusion in addition to a listing of references.
Score
0/3
Part 1 Quiz
What should you do after you read the article's abstract?
Read the thesis statement.

Skim the article.

Read the conclusion.

2
Part

Planning a Draft
1.
 1
Write down a brief description of the research. In a quick free write, describe the
academic journey of the article, listing the steps taken from starting point to concluding
results, describing methodology and the form of the study undertaken.There is no need
to be too specific; that's what the actual summary will be for.
 When you're first getting started, it's helpful to turn your filter off and just quickly write
out what you remember from the article. These will help you discover the main points
necessary to summarize.
2.
 2
Decide what aspects of the article are most important. You might refer to these as
the main supporting ideas, or sections, of the article. While these may be marked clearly
with subheadings, they may require more work to uncover. Anything that's a major point
used to support the main argument of the author needs to be present in the summary.
 Depending on the research, you may want to describe the theoretical background of the
research, or the assumptions of the researchers. In scientific writing, it's important to
clearly summarize the hypotheses the researchers outlined before undertaking the
research, as well as the procedures used in following through with the project.
 Summarize briefly any statistical results and include a rudimentary interpretation of the
data for your summary.
 In humanities articles, it's usually good to summarize the fundamental assumptions and
the school of thought from which the author comes, as well as the examples and the
ideas presented throughout the article.
3.

3
Identify key vocabulary to use in the summary. Make sure all the major keywords
that are used in the article make it into your summary. It's important that you fully
 examine the meanings of these more complicated terms so that your summary reader
can grasp the content as you move forward with the summary.
 Any words or terms that the author coins need to be included and discussed in your
summary.
4.

4
Aim to keep it brief. Journal summaries don't need to be anywhere close to the length
of the articles themselves. The purpose of the summary is to provide a condensed but
separate description of the research, either for use for the primary research collector, or
to help you redigest the information at a later date in the research process.
  As a general rule of thumb, you can probably make one paragraph per main point,
ending up with no more than 500-1000 words, for most academic articles. For most
journal summaries, you'll be writing several short paragraphs that summarize each
separate portion of the journal article.
Score
0/3
Part 2 Quiz
What aspect of the article should you always include in a summary?
Examples

Steps in the logical process

Theoretical background
3
Part

Writing Your Summary

1.
 1
Do not use personal pronouns (I, you, us, we, our, your, my).
2.
 2
Keep the tone as objective as possible. You're not critiquing the article, you're giving
an overview of it.
3.
 3
Start by defining the research question. Toward the beginning of the article, possibly
in the introduction, the authors should discuss the focus of the research study and what
the targeted objectives were for conducting the research. This is where your summary
should begin. Describe, in your own words, the main argument the authors hope to
prove with their research.
 In scientific articles, usually there is an introduction which establishes the background
for the experiment or study, and won't provide you with much to summarize. It will be
followed by the development of a research question and testing procedures, though,
which are key in dictating the content for the rest of the article.
4.

4
Discuss the methodology used by the authors. This portion discusses the research
tools and methods used during the study.[4] In other words, you need to summarize how
the authors or researchers came to the conclusions they came to with first-hand
research or data collection.
 The specifics of the testing procedures don't usually need to be included in your
summary in their entirety; they should be reduced to a simple idea of how the research
question was addressed. The results of the study will usually be processed data,
 sometimes accompanied by raw, pre-process data. Only the processed data needs to
be included in the summary.
5.

5
Describe the results. One of the most important parts of the summary needs to be
describing what the authors accomplished as a result of their work.[5] Were the authors
successful and did they meet their objectives for conducting the research? What
conclusions have the authors drawn from this research? What are the implications of
this research, as described in the article?
  Make sure your summary covers the research question, the conclusions/results, and
how those results were achieved. These are crucial parts of the article and cannot be
left out.
6.

6
Connect the main ideas presented in the article. For some summaries, it's important
to show how the relationships among the ideas presented by the authors develop over
the course of the article. The primary objective of the summary is to present a brief
overview of the authors' essential points to the reader, making it important that you
 unpack those arguments and explain them in your own words. Fill in the blanks and
assumptions, helping to clarify the research and summarize it briefly.
 This is sometimes more important in summaries dealing with articles in the humanities.
For example, it might be helpful to unpack dense arguments about poet George
Herbert's relationship to the divine with more pedestrian summaries: "The author seeks
to humanize Herbert by discussing his daily routines, as opposed to his philosophies."
7.

7
Don't draw your own conclusions. A summary of an article shouldn't editorialize, or
offer your own interpretations of the data, unless explicitly stated as part of the
 assignment. In general, the point of a summary is to summarize the authors' points, not
to offer your own additions and editorials.
 This can be difficult for some inexperienced research writers to get the hang of at first,
but remember to keep the "I" out of it.
8.

8
Refrain from using direct quotations of text from the journal article. Quotations are
more often used when writing a college paper or essay, and are less important for a
journal article summary. Focus more on paraphrasing the ideas when writing a journal
article summary without losing focus of their meaning and intended content.
9.

9
Use present tense. Always use the present tense when you are discussing the
contents of a scholarly article.[6] This will help you maintain a parallel grammatical
structure throughout.
10.
10
Revise your draft. Good writing happens in revision. Go back and compare the focus
and content of what you have written to see that it matches and supports the context of
the journal article. A journal article that has been properly summarized provides
potential readers with a short review, which is important when they are browsing and
searching for specific information about a particular topic.