What is the structure of an academic article?
Scholarly, peer-reviewed articles in the sciences are often organized with a standardized layout with similar headings in each. You can learn different information about the research in each section.
Answer
Many scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles, especially empirical articles, are structured according to the IMRaD layout. IMRaD stands for Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. These are the major sections of the article, and each part has an important role:
- Introduction: explains the research project, previous research the project builds on (i.e., the literature review), and what question this research will answer.
- Methods: details how the research answers the question, including the specific ways data was gathered and analyzed.
- Results: provides the data collected from the Methods, often presented with charts, graphs, and other visualizations.
- Discussion: explains the importance of the Results, including any limitations, applications, and conclusions, and how they compare to previous research.
Articles will also begin with an Abstract, a scholarly summary of the article that often includes simplified information from the different IMRaD sections.
While an IMRaD article will have all of these sections, the headings may have different names or split a section into multiple headings. For example, the "Methods" section might be called "Methodology" or "Research Methods," there may be a separate "Literature Review" heading in addition to "Introduction," or there might be separate headings for both "Discussion" and "Conclusion."
When reading an academic article for the first time, it can be helpful to use the ADIRM method to read the article in this order: Abstract, Discussion, Introduction, Results, Methods. Use each section to answer these questions:
- Abstract: What is the purpose of the study? Can you tell what the main findings might be?
- Discussion: How does this study compare to other researchers' results? Why does what was learned in this study matter?
- Introduction: What problem or question is the study addressing? What have other researchers already learned about this problem?
- Results: What kind of data did they collect? What kind of visuals do they use to describe the information they gathered?
- Methods: What did they do? What special equipment, processes, or techniques did they use?