Our last assignment showed us how to find source information and primary literature by searching for published manuscripts from peer-reviewed journals. Once you find your journal article, you will arrive at your next challenge: reading the paper!
Scientific journal articles are written in a specific way, and their structure is important for many reasons. Imagine you are in graduate school and you are reading several papers about a subject: wouldn’t it be helpful if all of the papers had their information laid out in a similar way? That is one reason scientific papers are organized: it keeps important information separated and easy to find when you referencing key elements of a manuscript. For example, if you would like to find the statistics of a study, you can look in the “analysis” or "methods" section. If you would like a general idea of the conclusions, you can look in the “discussion” or “conclusion” section. For a general idea of the "anatomy" of a scientific paper, see figure 1.
Scientific journal articles are written in a specific way, and their structure is important for many reasons. Imagine you are in graduate school and you are reading several papers about a subject: wouldn’t it be helpful if all of the papers had their information laid out in a similar way? That is one reason scientific papers are organized: it keeps important information separated and easy to find when you referencing key elements of a manuscript. For example, if you would like to find the statistics of a study, you can look in the “analysis” or "methods" section. If you would like a general idea of the conclusions, you can look in the “discussion” or “conclusion” section. For a general idea of the "anatomy" of a scientific paper, see figure 1.
Figure 1. The basic structure of a scientific manuscript
For the following assignment, pick a journal article (your instructor may assign one or allow you to choose among several) and complete the following steps. Answers must be handwritten. Return the printed copy of the labeled manuscript stapled to your handwritten answers.
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Part 1. Circle and label (2 points each)
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Part 2. Answer the following questions. You can use google/other resources to gain insight into your answers. 5 points each.
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Below are some alternative PDF's of peer-reviewed manuscripts that you may use for your assignment
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Experimental Evidence of Alarm Eavesdropping on Amazonian Mixed-flock Followers by Two Social Sentinel Species
Hunts el al 2020 
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The Epidemiological Characteristics of an Outbreak of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Diseases (COVID-19) — China, 2020
COVID Response Epidemiology Team 2020
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