Evolutionary biology

Scientific journal articles can be daunting with their technical jargon, footnotes, and statistics. However, understanding one is not an impossible task. Below, is a guideline
to the basic parts of a scientific paper in evolutionary biology to give you an idea of how
to extract the important information. Keep in mind that while different journals use
different article formats, all of the major sections below are present in other scientific
papers, but may occur in a different order or may be combined.
Article
Marshall MM, Batten LC, Remington DL, Lacey EP. 2019. Natural Selection contributes
to geographic patterns of thermal plasticity in Plantago lanceolata. Ecology and
Evolution 9: 2945-2963.
It’s worth looking up parts of the title that you don’t understand.
Take a look at the title of this paper. What information can you extract from the title?
What can you expect to learn about? Which organisms are involved? Any other hints?
Authors
The order of authors usually reflects the distribution of the workload. The first author is the scientist that performed most of the work and orchestrated the completion of the manuscript. A footnote will usually indicate which author to contact regarding the paper. This is the person to contact if you want to examine the data supporting the paper, to request an interview about the research for a
publication—or to find out about graduate work in his or her lab! Also, be sure to check out the affiliations of the authors. Are they at universities, in industry, or in government? Sometimes this can give you an idea of why this research was done in the first place. These researchers are all from academia, and a quick internet search can give you plenty of information on the kind of work these authors are carrying on. Find out what Dr. Elizabeth Lacey’s Lab work on. What other projects are being carried out in her lab?
Abstract
Spend some time on the abstract! The abstract summarizes the entire paper. Read
the abstract first to get a thumbnail sketch of where the authors are going and
whether or not the paper will be of interest to you. Like a chapter outline, the
abstract gives you a general idea of what’s coming and makes it easier for you to fill
in the details later. Translate the abstract line by line into plain English. This
might mean you have to look up some vocabulary words. Don’t worry if you get
hung up on a sentence. Just try to understand each one as best you can.
When you read a paper on your own, you might not be able to translate every sentence of the abstract, but give it a try and just get as far as you can! It will help you understand the
rest of the paper.
BIOL320 – Principles of Evolutionary Biology
Dissecting a Scientific Paper – A Toolkit
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Introduction
The introduction is a short background section that explains the significance of this particular research within the context of what is already known. The introduction summarizes the authors’ questions or hypotheses and the approach that they propose to address them. Unless you are familiar with the field already, don’t skip reading the introduction! Odds are, you will need this information later. Restate the main point of each paragraph in plain English, but if a paragraph is just impossible to understand, press on ahead! Don’t let one confusing paragraph stop you. You may be able to figure out what it means later or may not end up needing it
at all.
References
References are extensively cited in the introduction. These are papers that the authors use to frame their arguments and questions. The citations are literally a
scientific scaffold for the authors to build upon. The format of citations depends on the journal, but usually, in scientific literature, it is parenthetical and not footnoted.
These references can be a handy way for you to learn about an area of research. If there is something in the introduction that you don’t understand, you can look up the reference associated with that idea to find out more. Take a look at the cited references and look at the titles of the publications at the end of the paper. Do you identify any citation patterns? Do the titles of the cited publications make sense in the context of the citation?
Figures
Figures are an important part of the manuscript. They present key information graphically to help readers visualize patterns in the data. Figures are referred to at the appropriate place in the text. When you see a reference to a figure, stop and spend some time studying the figure! Often, the figure will make it much easier to understand what the text is saying. The caption is important too. Captions often provide key information that isn’t available anywhere else in the paper and must provide enough information so the figure can be interpreted without reference to the text. In other words, the figures can stand alone. If a scientist is already familiar with a particular area of research and wants to understand a journal article quickly, he or she may just read the abstract and study the figures to get the main points of the paper. Tables, like figures, organize or summarize data. They must include informative captions and should be interpretable without returning to the body of the paper. When you see a table in a paper, try to determine what main
messages it is intended to convey.
How many Figures/Tables are there in the paper? Describe in plain English the main
message each figure/table is trying to convey.
Results
The results section of a scientific paper is where the authors’ analysis of the data is presented. Authors do not usually present raw data. Instead, the results section summarizes the data using tables, graphs, figures, and statistics. This is the part of
the paper to focus on if you want to know how reliable/reasonable the authors’ later
BIOL320 – Principles of Evolutionary Biology
Dissecting a Scientific Paper – A Toolkit
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conclusions are. Typically, authors keep their reporting of the data and their interpretation of the data separate, so that the reader can better evaluate the interpretation. Results sections usually contain lots of statistics and figures. When you are first reading a challenging article, it may be helpful to ignore the statistics for the most part and pay more attention to the figures. You can look up more details of a statistical test if you need to. When you come across an unfamiliar
statistic, remember that a p-value smaller than 0.05 indicates a significant result,
but nothing about the size or importance of the effect.
What are the main findings of the paper? Present the results in plain English.
Discussion
The discussion is the place where authors explain their interpretation of their data
and how it reflects on their hypothesis or informs their question. In this section, the
authors also compare and contrast their findings with those of other researchers,
discuss implications of the work, and highlight future directions for research. Some
of these tasks may also or alternatively be done in a conclusion section.
What are the main points of the discussion?
Conclusion
If this paper had a distinct conclusion, it would consist of paragraphs that reiterate
the significance of this contribution to a larger question and highlight future
directions for research. This is another place where unfamiliar ideas might be
brought into play, so be prepared to look up a concept or check out an additional
article to fully understand the conclusion. Since this paper does not have a
conclusion, these ideas are usually re-stated at the end of the discussion.
What are the authors’ main conclusions? State in plain English.
Materials and Methods
The methods section is often placed within the paper rather than at the end—
usually just after the Introduction. It provides details on sample, analytical tools,
study design, equipment, potential sources of error, and methods of statistical
analysis. Because this section is most relevant for readers conducting similar
research (and is only skimmed by most readers), it may appear in smaller font. This
section is necessary for other experts to evaluate the validity of a particular study,
but it is often challenging to read and provides little insight for non-experts. You
can usually get the information you need just by skimming and looking things up in
the methods section if you have a question about how a particular result was
obtained.
Skim over the methods. Briefly describe how the authors generated their results.
Supporting Information
A reference to supporting information is often provided at the end of the
manuscript. This information will be useful to readers interested in details of the
data or study design. The information may include items that cannot be printed
(like video or audio), or items that don’t fit within the page limits for the
manuscript. Unless you are conducting research in a related area, you are unlikely
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Dissecting a Scientific Paper – A Toolkit
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to need to access the supporting information. If you are curious, take a peek at the
supporting information for this article.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments allow the authors to thank people, organizations, and funders
that were instrumental to the work, but did not participate in writing or analyzing
the data. In some journals, this section also provides a sketch of the work that each
author did on the study in order to better allocate credit for the work. Funding
sources are almost always acknowledged here—and might give you an idea of where
to apply for funding for your own related work. The acknowledgments section may
also include statement about competing interests or conflict of interest. Journals
require authors to reveal whether or not they have a personal stake in the outcome
the research being reported on (e.g., if an author is being paid as a consultant for a
pharmaceutical company whose produces drugs that treat the disease being
studied). Potential conflicts of interest must be revealed to readers so that they can
judge whether this may have been allowed to influence the outcome of the study.
Depending on the journal some of these items may be referenced in different places.
For example, in the journal Science, acknowledgements are noted as an endnote in
the list of references.
What is the main funding source of this research?
References
These are the published papers that the authors directly cite in their study.
Formatting varies considerably from journal to journal. References are a valuable
resource for finding additional information. You can often find at least the abstract
of a reference online simply by typing the title of the paper into Google Scholar
(http://scholar.google.com/).
By looking over the references, how can you decided whether they are appropriate to this paper