Proven Tips on How to Read Scientific Literature

A printed article with yellow highlighting under a blue pen with the hands of the person reading and annotating.
A person reads and annotates an article printout. Photo Credit: Y.Arcurs/iStockphoto

In our undergraduate years, as we get involved with research and science, it can be incredibly overwhelming to read scientific literature. It’s easy to drown in hundreds of thousands of articles with fancy-sounding titles, pages and pages of complex writings, and dozens of figures that you have no idea what they mean. However, reading scientific literature is a necessary skill to have, and you must be able to understand what scientists know, and what they don’t. 

Therefore, I’ve created a list of tips and advice to tackle scientific literature as an undergraduate. Follow my advice, and you’re on your way to impress your supervisors with your knowledge, and create a nuanced understanding of where your research lies within the body of knowledge that scientists have been cultivating!

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The Alumni Advantage: Tapping into Princeton’s Network

Princeton alum, many in Orange and Black, participate in the 2013 P-rade.
Princeton alumni P-rade, 2013. Photo credit: Daniel Day.

As Princeton students in 2024, we’ve all heard other students throwing around the terms “connections” and “networking.”  Although I myself was eager to take advantage of Princeton’s vast resources, I didn’t quite know where to start, or how to start. To those of you who are facing a similar dilemma, let me introduce you to an incredible, vastly underutilized resource: our alumni network.

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