Article Review Assignment

The assignment is to select one peer reviewed article that reports on scientific research that has been completed from the list of journals (available on-line in the library).  You will read the article and write a 750 word review & critique of that article.  This assignment must be typewritten and double-spaced.  A copy of the article must be submitted with the review. Be sure to review the rubric prior to turning in the assignment.    

The article review should have three main parts:

• A heading which provides all the necessary bibliographic information about the article  to include author name(s), year, title, journal name, volume, issue, page numbers
• A summary which outlines the article and reports briefly on its purpose and overall argument
• A critique which uses knowledge of the field to evaluate the quality of the article

Here are some questions that you may try to answer in your report:

Summary  

•  What is the hypothesis being tested? 
• What predictions did the author(s) make? 
• Why is this hypothesis interesting?  
• What species did the author(s) examine? 
• What methods did they use to test the hypothesis?
•  What results were obtained?
• What conclusions did the author(s) draw?

This must be in your own words.  Do not just quote the authors’ results section.  Tell me what their results mean in plain English.

Critique   

• What other questions could the author(s) have posed?
• What are the long-term implications of this study, if any? 
• How could it be improved, if at all? 
• What implications do you think the study will have for the field of biology?
• What are the conservation implications of the study, if any?

Your review should be in the form of an essay that addresses the questions above.  That is, do not just answer questions with a sentence.  These article reviews should not be merely summaries, you must provide a paragraph of critique.  You should think about what you read and write a cohesive discussion of the research article that addresses the questions above. Do not directly copy sentences from texts, scientific papers, or other sources without proper citations.  Also, please do not use a series of quotes.  Paraphrase when you want to report ideas in your own words.  Ask yourself what the author meant and then explain it in your own words.  Do not panic if you have trouble understanding the statistical analysis portions of the Results section!  Remember the results are interpreted for you in the Discussion section.

https://bioone-org.eztcc.vccs.edu/journalArticle/Download?fullDOI=10.1505%2Fifor.13.1.56