What is Article Review

Article Review Writing Guide

Many students ask this ubiquitous question 'What is a review article?' A review article is a professional paper, which requires a comprehensive analysis and a well-organized presentation of your arguments. Your main task is to review your topic, sum everything up and provide a clear understanding of the topic you researched.

Question

Article Review Writing Process

1. Summarization.
2. Classification.
3. Analysis.
4. Critiques.
5. Comparison.

The analysis, evaluation, and comparison presuppose using theories, ideas, and research, which concern the article's subject area.

Types of Review Writing

Journal

A journal article review takes stock of the strong and weak points of an article. A high-profile paper writer should provide the reader with an analysis and interpretation that testifies to the article’s value.

Research

A research article review has nothing in common with a journal article review because it evaluates the used research method and presents that information in retrospect to the analysis and critique.

Science

Scientific articles mostly deal with the research that is somehow connected to science. As a rule, scientific articles contain more background information that helps you provide a comprehensible understanding of the article.

Format

The format of your article review must correspond to the citation style, which you were assigned. If you have some doubts, find the instructions on the chosen format and ask your instructor to elucidate some other pointers to provide a decent format for an article review.

How to Write an Article Review in APA

If you have opted for APA format, you need to know how to write an article review APA. When you stick to APA format, you should provide bibliographical entries for the sources you used.
You can find examples of an article review APA format on the Internet.

How to Write an Article Review 

When you clearly understand what a review article is, you should get the hang of how to write a review article. The whole writing process consists of several stages:

STAGE 1: PREPARATION

Establish an Article Review

This article is aimed at people who are knowledgeable about the field of knowledge you are writing about. Your review aims to sum up the meat and potatoes of the article, its main arguments, discoveries, and the author's opinion of the subject matter. Additionally, you need to evaluate the author's contribution to the discipline and its application potential.
It would help if you also remembered that an article review is about stating your opinion of the work and giving a deep evaluation of the author's ideas presented in the article. While analyzing the article, you will bank on your own ideas and research experience. You will also need to conclude on the grounds of your own judgment supported by your own experience in this field.
In fact, you discuss the research, which the author already did, but you are not engaged in any research yourself.

Map Out Your Review Process

You should clearly understand how you will be writing your article before reading the article you will analyze. That is because you should establish which parts of the article are the most significant in your review. The article review outline looks as follows:
Summary of the article. Key points, facts, and claims.
Redeeming features. The author’s strengths and the most powerful parts of the article.
Downsides. Indicate some lack of information, logically inconsistent facts, the contradiction of ideas, questions without answers, etc. Render your judgment on the grounds of the sufficiency of the given facts for backing up the author's main argument.

Scroll Through the Article

Flick through the article’s title, abstract, headings, etc. Familiarize yourself with the essence of each paragraph. It should suffice to grasp the author’s main ideas and argument. After that, you can get down to the whole article.
If you stumble upon some ideas or concepts about which you have any doubts or questions, jot them down. Consult the dictionary or other sources to elucidate the unknown terms.

Read the Article Attentively

Examine the article carefully. If you are using digital devices for reading, highlight the most important parts. If you have a printed version, use a pen. The most important parts of the work are the main points and the facts for backing up. Do not succumb to the temptation of highlighting every part. Take notes on the margins and compare different parts of the article.
Do not limit yourself to what is written in the paper and use your own knowledge about the subject matter. It may be something you learned at school or found out through reading. Does your current knowledge correspond to the ideas in the article or contradict them? Provide the similarities and the differences the article gives and compare them to your background knowledge on the topic.
If the paper contains material you cannot fully comprehend, you should read up on it. Basically, you cannot produce a serious article review unless you fully grasp the subject matter.

Retelling

It is advisable to do it in writing. In fact, all you need is to reproduce the information you have just learned using your own words.
This retelling is only aimed at you, so it does not require any editing or proofreading, but it should be comprehensible so that you could turn to it when an idea or point has slipped your mind.
If you opt for an outline, you would rather not express your opinions here. In this section, it is more sensible to focus on the main points of the paper.
As soon as you are done with a retelling of the article, think over which parts you should highlight in your review. While your prime focus is the main issues, you should also pay special attention to the content, how the author interprets facts, etc.
Re-read your retelling to weed out any unnecessary items. It includes repeated information or something irrelevant to your subject matter.

Outline Your Review

Scroll through your summary to make sure that the author clearly elucidated each point. Highlight the points that could have been improved and the ones where the author was clear and accurate, and where she/he made groundbreaking points. Afterward, compile the lists of the advantages and disadvantages of the article and sum them up. For instance, introducing new information can serve as an advantage, and a disadvantage may be an inaccurate representation of the existing knowledge on the subject matter. Highlight these outcomes in your study and support them with the evidence from the text of the article.
Answering these questions may come in handy in your outline writing:

• What was the goal of the article?
• What theories does the author expand on?
• Did the author give accurate definitions?
• Is the supportive evidence to the point?
• What is the role of the article in its field of knowledge?
• Does it make any contribution to the development of this field?
• Does the author put across his or her ideas in a comprehensible way?

One of your underlying tasks is to give a bias-free judgment. Thus, it would help to be objective and not overburden your paper with too many personal opinions.

STAGE 2. WRITING

Think Over the Title of Your Paper

The title of your review should give them insight into the focus you decided to follow in one of the previous steps.

Provide the Citation of the Article That You Are Reviewing

You should put it under the title and stick to the required citation style. The main body of your review should follow straight after this citation.

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Give the Background Information About the Article That You Are Analyzing

Your review should begin with indicating the title of the article your review is based on, its author(s), the title of the journal, and the year of publication.

Write Your Introductory Part

Your introduction should highlight the essence of the article you are analyzing. In this part, you also put forward the author's thesis. If the article does not contain a thesis, you should figure it out on your own. The introductory part should contain the article's main theme and the author's main claim.

1. Opt for the formal style and impersonal or the third-person narration.
2. As a rule, the introduction should make up not more than 25% of your review.
3. The introductory part is summarized by your own thesis, in which you outline the article’s strongest point and the main downside.

Provide an Overview of the Article

This overview will help readers to get to the core of the paper under review. Explain the main claim, main points, and research results using your own words. Show how the evidence backs up the argument in the article. Comment on the conclusions the author made.

1. Be as concise as possible and at the same time try to give maximum information. To achieve this, do not provide the information that your readers already know.
2. Insert one or two direct quotes.
3. Look through your introductory part to make sure that it is in accord with the article.

Write the Main Body of Your Review

Turn to your summary and mention how well the topic is dwelt upon in the article. Basically, in this part, you assess how comprehensible and meaningful the article is. As a rule, you will need to dwell on each of the article's main ideas separately and explain whether the presented evidence backs them up. If you noticed any bias, you should indicate it. Remember that you render the judgment based on the author's contribution to understanding the subject matter and the article's overall significance. Additionally, you need to agree or disagree with the author and back up your opinion. In the main body conclusion, you should state what the readers can derive from reading this article.

• Mind that you need to adhere to the point and weed out any unrelated information.
• Other works on the topic should support your judgments.
• Ensure that your article summary has a logical connection to the section in which you assess it.
• Once again, a review is not only about stating your personal opinion. It is about the relevance and importance of the article you are reviewing.
• Keep in mind that each of the opinions that you put forward should be supported with solid evidence.

Write Your Conclusion

As a rule, the conclusion takes one paragraph and constitutes no more than 10% of your article review. In this part, you need to restate the article's main points and provide your judgment on the excellence and importance of the article.

Make a Final Proofread of Your Paper

If you are not pressed for time, put your paper aside for a while and then proofread it once again. Be especially mindful of all sorts of grammatical and punctuation errors and factual data. But other than that, double check your paper to make sure that all the information is relevant and eradicate all unnecessary items, but do not make a scene of it: a review should discuss no less than 3-4 most key issues.