• What method do they describe?
• How and where do they do the testing – geographic region, observational study, in a lab, in the field?
• What are the research questions – what are they observing? E.g., animal behaviors, disease response, population counts, human factors, soil health indicators
• What was the sample size?

• What are they describing overall, is this a reasonable way to get at that information?
• How are they presenting the data?
• Does this data make sense based on the methods used?
• How does this specific information relate to your larger questions?

Or watch the following video from the University of Minnesota on how to skim an article for the main points and take effective notes:

Reading a scholarly article can seem daunting at first. Scholarly articles are long and have a lot of data. If you break down the article into components, it will make it easier to read and understand.

For a quick overview, click on the link below to see an example of a scholarly article and its parts.

Citation styles vary widely by journal.  Check the journal's website to see if they provide citation instructions under a section typically called "Guide for Authors" or "Author instructions."  If you can't find this information on the website, use the references section of the journal article you want to model your references after as an example. Pay particular attention to the order they place the information in, whether or not they use italics or bold, how they abbreviate journal titles, and how they use punctuation.

In Rangeland Sciences you will typically use the citation style of the Society for Range Management's peer-reviewed journal Rangeland Ecology & Management. Below is a link to REM's Guide for Authors as well as a pdf of their citation guide.