Once you see a citation that looks promising, try to find out more about the article. Most, but not all, databases will provide an abstract.
| An abstract is a summary of the article. It can be only a brief sentence, or it can be a large paragraph. |
To read the abstract, you may need to click on the article title to go to another page where the abstract is displayed, or look for a link somewhere that says “Abstract”. If you still cannot find an abstract, try looking at the full article text if available. Articles will often be printed with abstracts at the very top.
The abstract will tell you the main points of the article in a concise way, letting you know whether the article is of interest or not without having to read the whole thing. In the case of lengthy or complicated articles, this can save you a lot of time!
