ABC 123Summarizing Research Articles

Welcome! This brief module is designed to help you effectively and efficiently summarize, organize, and store the research articles you will read in your graduate program.

How to use this module

This modules will address (1) best practices for summarizing what you read so you can retain it for future use and (2) methods for naming and storing your summaries in an organized manner that helps you recall and re-use references to your academic reading.

It is broken into four parts:

Summarizing Research Articles (this page) provides an overview of summarizing research, starting with naming conventions to aid you in a consistent filing system.
Strategies for Reading Academic Articles provides practical tips for getting the most out of your academic reading. If you are new to research reading, look at these tips before you read your first article,
Research Summary Template provides a template you can download to summarize and organize each article you read. There is a brief video that provides helpful tips as well.
Storage Options provides recommendations for how to efficiently store your articles, including guidance for storing in your Canvas account.

Tip: Naming Conventions

Before you get started, consider how you want to name your files. Keeping in mind that by the time you complete your program of study you will have read dozens of academic works, plan for a naming convention that makes sense to you now and in the future. Consistency is key as you proceed so you can easily access and reference the articles.

Recommendation: Name by Author(s) and Date

Since most reference lists are organized by author and year, naming your files accordingly will guide you in quickly retrieving them. If you are saving a copy of both the article and the summary, you will want to name them similarly but specify one is the summary, as in <Author Name(s), Year> and <Author Name(s), Year_Summary>. When you go back to retrieve or reference your works you will easily be able to access them because you have a consistent naming convention.

Here is an APA citation for an article: (Note: Canvas does not have a hanging indentation option for true APA style)

Hayden, J. K., Smiley, R. A., Alexander, M., Kardong-Edgren, S., & Jeffries, P. R. (2014). The NCSBN National Simulation Study: A longitudinal, randomized, controlled study replacing clinical hours with simulation in prelicensure nursing education. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 5(2), S3–S40. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2155-8256(15)30062-4

By following the suggested naming convention, you would save two files:

"Hayden, et. al., 2014" (original article)
"Hayden, et. al., 2014_Summary" (article summary)