Some academic and scholarly articles can be dense and frustrating reads. This is especially true if you are new to the topic at hand, or the paper includes a lot of data collection and analysis. However, there still may be some information useful to you and your assignments in these articles. You just need to know where to look.

If you find yourself frustrated with an academic article that gets technical about the process, try skipping around to these three places:

• Abstract
  A summary of the article's purpose, process, and conclusion. It can help you understand the scope of the article and the key points.
• Introduction
  Where the author(s) often define the purpose for the article and provide relevant background information on the topic.
• Conclusion
  Where the article author(s) will summarize the results, their interpretation of the results, and the impact this has on the topic.

These three locations in an article will give you an overview of the information within.