Dissecting a scientific paper about evolutionary biologyScientific journal articles can be daunting with their technical jargon, footnotes, andstatistics. However, understanding one is not an impossible task. Below, is a guidelineto the basic parts of a scientific paper in evolutionary biology to give you an idea of howto extract the important information. Keep in mind that while different journals usedifferent article formats, all of the major sections below are present in other scientificpapers, but may occur in a different order or may be combined.ArticleMarshall MM, Batten LC, Remington DL, Lacey EP. 2019. Natural Selection contributesto geographic patterns of thermal plasticity in Plantago lanceolata. Ecology andEvolution 9: 2945-2963.TitleThe title of a scientific paper usually summarizes the most important point beingmade. 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?AuthorsThe order of authors usually reflects the distribution of the workload. The firstauthor is the scientist that performed most of the work and orchestrated thecompletion of the manuscript. A footnote will usually indicate which author tocontact regarding the paper. This is the person to contact if you want to examinethe data supporting the paper, to request an interview about the research for apublication—or to find out about graduate work in his or her lab! Also be sure tocheck out the affiliations of the authors. Are they at universities, in industry, or ingovernment? Sometimes this can give you an idea of why this research was done inthe first place. These researchers are all from academia, and a quick internet search cangive you plenty of information on the kind of work these authors are carrying on. Findout what Dr. Elizabeth Lacey’s Lab work on. What other projects are being carried out inher lab?AbstractSpend some time on the abstract! The abstract summarizes the entire paper. Readthe abstract first to get a thumbnail sketch of where the authors are going andwhether or not the paper will be of interest to you. Like a chapter outline, theabstract gives you a general idea of what’s coming and makes it easier for you to fillin the details later. Translate the abstract line by line into plain English. Thismight mean you have to look up some vocabulary words. Don’t worry if you gethung 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 ofthe abstract, but give it a try and just get as far as you can! It will help you understand therest of the paper.BIOL320 – Principles of Evolutionary BiologyDissecting a Scientific Paper – A Toolkit2IntroductionThe introduction is a short background section that explains the significance of thisparticular research within the context of what is already known. The introductionsummarizes the authors’ questions or hypotheses and the approach that theypropose to address them. Unless you are familiar with the field already, don’t skipreading the introduction! Odds are, you will need this information later. Restatethe main point of each paragraph in plain English, but if a paragraph is justimpossible to understand, press on ahead! Don’t let one confusing paragraph stopyou. You may be able to figure out what it means later or may not end up needing itat all.ReferencesReferences are extensively cited in the introduction. These are papers that theauthors use to frame their arguments and questions. The citations are literally ascientific scaffold for the authors to build upon. The format of citations depends onthe 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. Ifthere is something in the introduction that you don’t understand, you can look upthe reference associated with that idea to find out more. Take a look at the citedreferences and look at the titles of the publications at the end of the paper. Do youidentify any citation patterns? Do the titles of the cited publications make sense in thecontext of the citation?FiguresFigures are an important part of the manuscript. They present key informationgraphically to help readers visualize patterns in the data. Figures are referred to atthe appropriate place in the text. When you see a reference to a figure, stop andspend some time studying the figure! Often, the figure will make it much easier tounderstand what the text is saying. The caption is important too. Captions oftenprovide key information that isn’t available anywhere else in the paper and mustprovide enough information so the figure can be interpreted without reference tothe text. In other words, the figures can stand alone. If a scientist is alreadyfamiliar with a particular area of research and wants to understand a journalarticle quickly, he or she may just read the abstract and study the figures to get themain points of the paper. Tables, like figures, organize or summarize data. Theymust include informative captions and should be interpretable without returning tothe body of the paper. When you see a table in a paper, try to determine what mainmessages it is intended to convey.How many Figures/Tables are there in the paper? Describe in plain English the mainmessage each figure/table is trying to convey.ResultsThe results section of a scientific paper is where the authors’ analysis of the data ispresented. Authors do not usually present the raw data. Instead, the results sectionsummarizes the data using tables, graphs, figures, and statistics. This is the part ofthe paper to focus on if you want to know how reliable/reasonable the authors’ laterBIOL320 – Principles of Evolutionary BiologyDissecting a Scientific Paper – A Toolkit3conclusions are. Typically, authors keep their reporting of the data and theirinterpretation of the data separate, so that the reader can better evaluate theinterpretation. Results sections usually contain lots of statistics and figures. Whenyou are first reading a challenging article, it may be helpful to ignore the statisticsfor the most part and pay more attention to the figures. You can look up moredetails of a statistical test if you need to. When you come across an unfamiliarstatistic, 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.DiscussionThe discussion is the place where authors explain their interpretation of their dataand how it reflects on their hypothesis or informs their question. In this section, theauthors also compare and contrast their findings with those of other researchers,discuss implications of the work, and highlight future directions for research. Someof these tasks may also or alternatively be done in a conclusion section.What are the main points of the discussion?ConclusionIf this paper had a distinct conclusion, it would consist of paragraphs that reiteratethe significance of this contribution to a larger question and highlight futuredirections for research. This is another place where unfamiliar ideas might bebrought into play, so be prepared to look up a concept or check out an additionalarticle to fully understand the conclusion. Since this paper does not have aconclusion, these ideas are usually re-stated at the end of the discussion.What are the authors’ main conclusions? State in plain English.Materials and MethodsThe 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 statisticalanalysis. Because this section is most relevant for readers conducting similarresearch (and is only skimmed by most readers), it may appear in smaller font. Thissection 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. Youcan usually get the information you need just by skimming and looking things up inthe methods section if you have a question about how a particular result wasobtained.Skim over the methods. Briefly describe how the authors generated their results.Supporting InformationA reference to supporting information is often provided at the end of themanuscript. This information will be useful to readers interested in details of thedata 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 themanuscript. Unless you are conducting research in a related area, you are unlikelyBIOL320 – Principles of Evolutionary BiologyDissecting a Scientific Paper – A Toolkit4to need to access the supporting information. If you are curious, take a peek at thesupporting information for this article.AcknowledgmentsAcknowledgments allow the authors to thank people, organizations, and fundersthat were instrumental to the work, but did not participate in writing or analyzingthe data. In some journals, this section also provides a sketch of the work that eachauthor did on the study in order to better allocate credit for the work. Fundingsources are almost always acknowledged here—and might give you an idea of whereto apply for funding for your own related work. The acknowledgments section mayalso include statement about competing interests or conflict of interest. Journalsrequire authors to reveal whether or not they have a personal stake in the outcomethe research being reported on (e.g., if an author is being paid as a consultant for apharmaceutical company whose produces drugs that treat the disease beingstudied). Potential conflicts of interest must be revealed to readers so that they canjudge 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 inthe list of references.What is the main funding source of this research?ReferencesThese are the published papers that the authors directly cite in their study.Formatting varies considerably from journal to journal. References are a valuableresource for finding additional information. You can often find at least the abstractof 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