2.2 Anatomy of a Journal Article

All journal article have a similar format, consistent format. The parts of a scholarly article are labeled so that readers can easily navigate them.

Example Article:

Click the parts of an article for more information

Parts of a Journal Article

Title: a concise and descriptive title. This lets you know what the article is about.

Author Information: All authors who contributed to the article are listed. Often their affiliated institutions are included here or as a footnote.

Abstract: a short summary of the article. The abstract should share the research findings.

Introduction or Background: an overview of the research area that lays the foundation for the articles research.

Methods or Methodology: This describes how the research study was performed.

Results: a description of the results obtained. It presents the results without providing an interpretation. This often includes figures and tables.

Discussion: This section analyses and interprets the results presented in the Results section. New data is never presented.

Conclusion: This is a short section that summarizes the findings and significance of the article. The conclusion is omitted in some articles.

References: A list of all articles cited in the article. This section is sometimes labeled Bibliography, Works Cited or Literature Cited.

Supplementary Materials

Supplementary materials  are information or data that a researcher makes available that was not included in the printed version of an article. This information is omitted for space and is not essential to the article, but is still relevant to readers. Supplementary materials can include data, expanded  explanations, equations and more.

Supplementary materials can help you better understand an article. Supplementary data can be used to verify an article’s findings