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  • How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

Published on November 23, 2020 by Shona McCombes . Revised on May 31, 2023.

Summarizing , or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.

There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:

  • Read the text
  • Break it down into sections
  • Identify the key points in each section
  • Write the summary
  • Check the summary against the article

Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or evaluating the source . You should simply provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying any text from the original).

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Table of contents

When to write a summary, step 1: read the text, step 2: break the text down into sections, step 3: identify the key points in each section, step 4: write the summary, step 5: check the summary against the article, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about summarizing.

There are many situations in which you might have to summarize an article or other source:

  • As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material
  • To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
  • To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review

When you’re writing an academic text like an essay , research paper , or dissertation , you’ll integrate sources in a variety of ways. You might use a brief quote to support your point, or paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.

But it’s often appropriate to summarize a whole article or chapter if it is especially relevant to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you analyze or critique it.

In any case, the goal of summarizing is to give your reader a clear understanding of the original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.

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You should read the article more than once to make sure you’ve thoroughly understood it. It’s often effective to read in three stages:

  • Scan the article quickly to get a sense of its topic and overall shape.
  • Read the article carefully, highlighting important points and taking notes as you read.
  • Skim the article again to confirm you’ve understood the key points, and reread any particularly important or difficult passages.

There are some tricks you can use to identify the key points as you read:

  • Start by reading the abstract . This already contains the author’s own summary of their work, and it tells you what to expect from the article.
  • Pay attention to headings and subheadings . These should give you a good sense of what each part is about.
  • Read the introduction and the conclusion together and compare them: What did the author set out to do, and what was the outcome?

To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, break it down into smaller sections.

If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably already organized into clearly marked sections, usually including an introduction , methods , results , and discussion .

Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. But most articles and essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.

Now it’s time go through each section and pick out its most important points. What does your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or conclusion of the article?

Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the article. Your goal is to extract the essential points, leaving out anything that can be considered background information or supplementary detail.

In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in each part.

If the article takes a different form, you might have to think more carefully about what points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.

In that case, pay particular attention to the thesis statement —the central claim that the author wants us to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic sentences that signal the main idea of each paragraph.

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Now that you know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you need to put them in your own words.

To avoid plagiarism and show you’ve understood the article, it’s essential to properly paraphrase the author’s ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, not even just a sentence or two.

The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your own understanding of the author’s key points.

Examples of article summaries

Let’s take a look at an example. Below, we summarize this article , which scientifically investigates the old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

Davis et al. (2015) set out to empirically test the popular saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Apples are often used to represent a healthy lifestyle, and research has shown their nutritional properties could be beneficial for various aspects of health. The authors’ unique approach is to take the saying literally and ask: do people who eat apples use healthcare services less frequently? If there is indeed such a relationship, they suggest, promoting apple consumption could help reduce healthcare costs.

The study used publicly available cross-sectional data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Participants were categorized as either apple eaters or non-apple eaters based on their self-reported apple consumption in an average 24-hour period. They were also categorized as either avoiding or not avoiding the use of healthcare services in the past year. The data was statistically analyzed to test whether there was an association between apple consumption and several dependent variables: physician visits, hospital stays, use of mental health services, and use of prescription medication.

Although apple eaters were slightly more likely to have avoided physician visits, this relationship was not statistically significant after adjusting for various relevant factors. No association was found between apple consumption and hospital stays or mental health service use. However, apple eaters were found to be slightly more likely to have avoided using prescription medication. Based on these results, the authors conclude that an apple a day does not keep the doctor away, but it may keep the pharmacist away. They suggest that this finding could have implications for reducing healthcare costs, considering the high annual costs of prescription medication and the inexpensiveness of apples.

However, the authors also note several limitations of the study: most importantly, that apple eaters are likely to differ from non-apple eaters in ways that may have confounded the results (for example, apple eaters may be more likely to be health-conscious). To establish any causal relationship between apple consumption and avoidance of medication, they recommend experimental research.

An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary assignment. However, you’ll often want to give an even more concise summary of an article.

For example, in a literature review or meta analysis you may want to briefly summarize this study as part of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we can boil our summary down even further to include only the most relevant information.

Using national survey data, Davis et al. (2015) tested the assertion that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” and did not find statistically significant evidence to support this hypothesis. While people who consumed apples were slightly less likely to use prescription medications, the study was unable to demonstrate a causal relationship between these variables.

Citing the source you’re summarizing

When including a summary as part of a larger text, it’s essential to properly cite the source you’re summarizing. The exact format depends on your citation style , but it usually includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the end of your paper.

You can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free citation generators.

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Finally, read through the article once more to ensure that:

  • You’ve accurately represented the author’s work
  • You haven’t missed any essential information
  • The phrasing is not too similar to any sentences in the original.

If you’re summarizing many articles as part of your own work, it may be a good idea to use a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly cited. Just be sure to use one that’s safe and reliable.

If you want to know more about ChatGPT, AI tools , citation , and plagiarism , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

  • ChatGPT vs human editor
  • ChatGPT citations
  • Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
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  • What is ChatGPT?
  • Chicago style
  • Paraphrasing

 Plagiarism

  • Types of plagiarism
  • Self-plagiarism
  • Avoiding plagiarism
  • Academic integrity
  • Consequences of plagiarism
  • Common knowledge

A summary is a short overview of the main points of an article or other source, written entirely in your own words. Want to make your life super easy? Try our free text summarizer today!

A summary is always much shorter than the original text. The length of a summary can range from just a few sentences to several paragraphs; it depends on the length of the article you’re summarizing, and on the purpose of the summary.

You might have to write a summary of a source:

  • As a stand-alone assignment to prove you understand the material
  • For your own use, to keep notes on your reading
  • To provide an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review
  • In a paper , to summarize or introduce a relevant study

To avoid plagiarism when summarizing an article or other source, follow these two rules:

  • Write the summary entirely in your own words by paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
  • Cite the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

An abstract concisely explains all the key points of an academic text such as a thesis , dissertation or journal article. It should summarize the whole text, not just introduce it.

An abstract is a type of summary , but summaries are also written elsewhere in academic writing . For example, you might summarize a source in a paper , in a literature review , or as a standalone assignment.

All can be done within seconds with our free text summarizer .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, May 31). How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved February 15, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/how-to-summarize/

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Writing Article Summaries

  • Understanding Article Summaries 

Common Problems in Article Summaries

Read carefully and closely, structure of the summary, writing the summary.

  • Sample Outlines and Paragraphs

Understanding Article Summaries

An article summary is a short, focused paper about one scholarly article that is informed by a critical reading of that article. For argumentative articles, the summary identifies, explains, and analyses the thesis and supporting arguments; for empirical articles, the summary identifies, explains, and analyses the research questions, methods, findings, and implications of the study.

Although article summaries are often short and rarely account for a large portion of your grade, they are a strong indicator of your reading and writing skills. Professors ask you to write article summaries to help you to develop essential skills in critical reading, summarizing, and clear, organized writing. Furthermore, an article summary requires you to read a scholarly article quite closely, which provides a useful introduction to the conventions of writing in your discipline (e.g. Political Studies, Biology, or Anthropology).

The most common problem that students have when writing an article summary is that they misunderstand the goal of the assignment. In an article summary, your job is to write about the article, not about the actual topic of the article. For example, if you are summarizing Smith’s article about the causes of the Bubonic plague in Europe, your summary should be about Smith’s article: What does she want to find out about the plague? What evidence does she use? What is her argument? You are not writing a paper about the actual causes of Bubonic plague in Europe.

Further, as a part of critical reading, you will often consider your own position on a topic or an argument; it is tempting to include an assessment or opinion about the thesis or findings, but this is not the goal of an article summary. Rather, you must identify, explain, and analyse the main point and how it is supported.

Your key to success in writing an article summary is your understanding of the article; therefore, it is essential to read carefully and closely. The Academic Skills Centre offers helpful instruction on the steps for critical reading: pre-reading, active and analytical reading, and reflection.

Argumentative Articles

As you read an argumentative article, consider the following questions:

  • What is the topic?
  • What is the research question? In other words, what is the author trying to find out about that topic?
  • How does the author position his/her article in relation to other studies of the topic?
  • What is the thesis or position? What are the supporting arguments?
  • How are supporting arguments developed? What kind of evidence is used?
  • What is the significance of the author’s thesis? What does it help you to understand about the topic?

Empirical Articles

As you read an empirical article, consider the following questions:

  • What is the research question?
  • What are the predictions and the rationale for these predictions?
  • What methods were used (participants, sampling, materials, procedure)? What were the variables and controls?
  • What were the main results?
  • Are the findings supported by previous research?
  • What are the limitations of the study?
  • What are the implications or applications of the findings?

Create a Reverse Outline

Creating a reverse outline is one way to ensure that you fully understand the article. Pre-read the article (read the abstract, introduction, and/or conclusion). Summarize the main question(s) and thesis or findings. Skim subheadings and topic sentences to understand the organization; make notes in the margins about each section. Read each paragraph within a section; make short notes about the main idea or purpose of each paragraph. This strategy will help you to see how parts of the article connect to the main idea or the whole of the article.

A summary is written in paragraph form and generally does not include subheadings. An introduction is important to clearly identify the article, the topic, the question or purpose of the article, and its thesis or findings. The body paragraphs for a summary of an argumentative article will explain how arguments and evidence support the thesis. Alternatively, the body paragraphs of an empirical article summary may explain the methods and findings, making connections to predictions. The conclusion explains the significance of the argument or implications of the findings. This structure ensures that your summary is focused and clear.

Professors will often give you a list of required topics to include in your summary and/or explain how they want you to organize your summary. Make sure you read the assignment sheet with care and adapt the sample outlines below accordingly.

One significant challenge in writing an article summary is deciding what information or examples from the article to include. Remember, article summaries are much shorter than the article itself. You do not have the space to explain every point the author makes. Instead, you will need to explain the author’s main points and find a few excellent examples that illustrate these points.

You should also keep in mind that article summaries need to be written in your own words. Scholarly writing can use complex terminology to explain complicated ideas, which makes it difficult to understand and to summarize correctly. In the face of difficult text, many students tend to use direct quotations, saving them the time and energy required to understand and reword it. However, a summary requires you to summarize, which means “to state briefly or succinctly” (Oxford English Dictionary) the main ideas presented in a text. The brevity must come from you, in your own words, which demonstrates that you understand the article.

Sample Outlines and Paragraph

Sample outline for an argumentative article summary.

  • General topic of article
  • Author’s research question or approach to the topic
  • Author’s thesis
  • Explain some key points and how they support the thesis
  • Provide a key example or two that the author uses as evidence to support these points
  • Review how the main points work together to support the thesis?
  • How does the author explain the significance or implications of his/her article?

Sample Outline for an Empirical Article Summary

  • General topic of study
  • Author’s research question
  • Variables and hypotheses
  • Participants
  • Experiment design
  • Materials used
  • Key results
  • Did the results support the hypotheses?
  • Implications or applications of the study
  • Major limitations of the study

Sample Paragraph

The paragraph below is an example of an introductory paragraph from a summary of an empirical article:

Tavernier and Willoughby’s (2014) study explored the relationships between university students’ sleep and their intrapersonal, interpersonal, and educational development. While the authors cited many scholars who have explored these relationships, they pointed out that most of these studies focused on unidirectional correlations over a short period of time. In contrast, Tavernier and Willoughby tested whether there was a bidirectional or unidirectional association between participants’ sleep quality and duration and several psychosocial factors including intrapersonal adjustment, friendship quality, and academic achievement. Further they conducted a longitudinal study over a period of three years in order to determine whether there were changes in the strength or direction of these associations over time. They predicted that sleep quality would correlate with measures of intrapersonal adjustment, friendship quality, and academic achievement; they further hypothesized that this correlation would be bidirectional: sleep quality would predict psychosocial measures and at the same time, psychosocial measures would predict sleep quality.

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How To Write A Research Summary

Deeptanshu D

It’s a common perception that writing a research summary is a quick and easy task. After all, how hard can jotting down 300 words be? But when you consider the weight those 300 words carry, writing a research summary as a part of your dissertation, essay or compelling draft for your paper instantly becomes daunting task.

A research summary requires you to synthesize a complex research paper into an informative, self-explanatory snapshot. It needs to portray what your article contains. Thus, writing it often comes at the end of the task list.

Regardless of when you’re planning to write, it is no less of a challenge, particularly if you’re doing it for the first time. This blog will take you through everything you need to know about research summary so that you have an easier time with it.

How to write a research summary

What is a Research Summary?

A research summary is the part of your research paper that describes its findings to the audience in a brief yet concise manner. A well-curated research summary represents you and your knowledge about the information written in the research paper.

While writing a quality research summary, you need to discover and identify the significant points in the research and condense it in a more straightforward form. A research summary is like a doorway that provides access to the structure of a research paper's sections.

Since the purpose of a summary is to give an overview of the topic, methodology, and conclusions employed in a paper, it requires an objective approach. No analysis or criticism.

Research summary or Abstract. What’s the Difference?

They’re both brief, concise, and give an overview of an aspect of the research paper. So, it’s easy to understand why many new researchers get the two confused. However, a research summary and abstract are two very different things with individual purpose. To start with, a research summary is written at the end while the abstract comes at the beginning of a research paper.

A research summary captures the essence of the paper at the end of your document. It focuses on your topic, methods, and findings. More like a TL;DR, if you will. An abstract, on the other hand, is a description of what your research paper is about. It tells your reader what your topic or hypothesis is, and sets a context around why you have embarked on your research.

Getting Started with a Research Summary

Before you start writing, you need to get insights into your research’s content, style, and organization. There are three fundamental areas of a research summary that you should focus on.

  • While deciding the contents of your research summary, you must include a section on its importance as a whole, the techniques, and the tools that were used to formulate the conclusion. Additionally, there needs to be a short but thorough explanation of how the findings of the research paper have a significance.
  • To keep the summary well-organized, try to cover the various sections of the research paper in separate paragraphs. Besides, how the idea of particular factual research came up first must be explained in a separate paragraph.
  • As a general practice worldwide, research summaries are restricted to 300-400 words. However, if you have chosen a lengthy research paper, try not to exceed the word limit of 10% of the entire research paper.

How to Structure Your Research Summary

The research summary is nothing but a concise form of the entire research paper. Therefore, the structure of a summary stays the same as the paper. So, include all the section titles and write a little about them. The structural elements that a research summary must consist of are:

It represents the topic of the research. Try to phrase it so that it includes the key findings or conclusion of the task.

The abstract gives a context of the research paper. Unlike the abstract at the beginning of a paper, the abstract here, should be very short since you’ll be working with a limited word count.

Introduction

This is the most crucial section of a research summary as it helps readers get familiarized with the topic. You should include the definition of your topic, the current state of the investigation, and practical relevance in this part. Additionally, you should present the problem statement, investigative measures, and any hypothesis in this section.

Methodology

This section provides details about the methodology and the methods adopted to conduct the study. You should write a brief description of the surveys, sampling, type of experiments, statistical analysis, and the rationality behind choosing those particular methods.

Create a list of evidence obtained from the various experiments with a primary analysis, conclusions, and interpretations made upon that. In the paper research paper, you will find the results section as the most detailed and lengthy part. Therefore, you must pick up the key elements and wisely decide which elements are worth including and which are worth skipping.

This is where you present the interpretation of results in the context of their application. Discussion usually covers results, inferences, and theoretical models explaining the obtained values, key strengths, and limitations. All of these are vital elements that you must include in the summary.

Most research papers merge conclusion with discussions. However, depending upon the instructions, you may have to prepare this as a separate section in your research summary. Usually, conclusion revisits the hypothesis and provides the details about the validation or denial about the arguments made in the research paper, based upon how convincing the results were obtained.

The structure of a research summary closely resembles the anatomy of a scholarly article . Additionally, you should keep your research and references limited to authentic and  scholarly sources only.

Tips for Writing a Research Summary

The core concept behind undertaking a research summary is to present a simple and clear understanding of your research paper to the reader. The biggest hurdle while doing that is the number of words you have at your disposal. So, follow the steps below to write a research summary that sticks.

1. Read the parent paper thoroughly

You should go through the research paper thoroughly multiple times to ensure that you have a complete understanding of its contents. A 3-stage reading process helps.

a. Scan: In the first read, go through it to get an understanding of its basic concept and methodologies.

b. Read: For the second step, read the article attentively by going through each section, highlighting the key elements, and subsequently listing the topics that you will include in your research summary.

c. Skim: Flip through the article a few more times to study the interpretation of various experimental results, statistical analysis, and application in different contexts.

Sincerely go through different headings and subheadings as it will allow you to understand the underlying concept of each section. You can try reading the introduction and conclusion simultaneously to understand the motive of the task and how obtained results stay fit to the expected outcome.

2. Identify the key elements in different sections

While exploring different sections of an article, you can try finding answers to simple what, why, and how. Below are a few pointers to give you an idea:

  • What is the research question and how is it addressed?
  • Is there a hypothesis in the introductory part?
  • What type of methods are being adopted?
  • What is the sample size for data collection and how is it being analyzed?
  • What are the most vital findings?
  • Do the results support the hypothesis?

Discussion/Conclusion

  • What is the final solution to the problem statement?
  • What is the explanation for the obtained results?
  • What is the drawn inference?
  • What are the various limitations of the study?

3. Prepare the first draft

Now that you’ve listed the key points that the paper tries to demonstrate, you can start writing the summary following the standard structure of a research summary. Just make sure you’re not writing statements from the parent research paper verbatim.

Instead, try writing down each section in your own words. This will not only help in avoiding plagiarism but will also show your complete understanding of the subject. Alternatively, you can use a summarizing tool (AI-based summary generators) to shorten the content or summarize the content without disrupting the actual meaning of the article.

SciSpace Copilot is one such helpful feature! You can easily upload your research paper and ask Copilot to summarize it. You will get an AI-generated, condensed research summary. SciSpace Copilot also enables you to highlight text, clip math and tables, and ask any question relevant to the research paper; it will give you instant answers with deeper context of the article..

4. Include visuals

One of the best ways to summarize and consolidate a research paper is to provide visuals like graphs, charts, pie diagrams, etc.. Visuals make getting across the facts, the past trends, and the probabilistic figures around a concept much more engaging.

5. Double check for plagiarism

It can be very tempting to copy-paste a few statements or the entire paragraphs depending upon the clarity of those sections. But it’s best to stay away from the practice. Even paraphrasing should be done with utmost care and attention.

Also: QuillBot vs SciSpace: Choose the best AI-paraphrasing tool

6. Religiously follow the word count limit

You need to have strict control while writing different sections of a research summary. In many cases, it has been observed that the research summary and the parent research paper become the same length. If that happens, it can lead to discrediting of your efforts and research summary itself. Whatever the standard word limit has been imposed, you must observe that carefully.

7. Proofread your research summary multiple times

The process of writing the research summary can be exhausting and tiring. However, you shouldn’t allow this to become a reason to skip checking your academic writing several times for mistakes like misspellings, grammar, wordiness, and formatting issues. Proofread and edit until you think your research summary can stand out from the others, provided it is drafted perfectly on both technicality and comprehension parameters. You can also seek assistance from editing and proofreading services , and other free tools that help you keep these annoying grammatical errors at bay.

8. Watch while you write

Keep a keen observation of your writing style. You should use the words very precisely, and in any situation, it should not represent your personal opinions on the topic. You should write the entire research summary in utmost impersonal, precise, factually correct, and evidence-based writing.

9. Ask a friend/colleague to help

Once you are done with the final copy of your research summary, you must ask a friend or colleague to read it. You must test whether your friend or colleague could grasp everything without referring to the parent paper. This will help you in ensuring the clarity of the article.

Once you become familiar with the research paper summary concept and understand how to apply the tips discussed above in your current task, summarizing a research summary won’t be that challenging. While traversing the different stages of your academic career, you will face different scenarios where you may have to create several research summaries.

In such cases, you just need to look for answers to simple questions like “Why this study is necessary,” “what were the methods,” “who were the participants,” “what conclusions were drawn from the research,” and “how it is relevant to the wider world.” Once you find out the answers to these questions, you can easily create a good research summary following the standard structure and a precise writing style.

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  • How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

Published on 25 September 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 12 May 2023.

Summarising , or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.

There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:

  • Read the text
  • Break it down into sections
  • Identify the key points in each section
  • Write the summary
  • Check the summary against the article

Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or analysing the source. You should simply provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying any text from the original).

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Be assured that you'll submit flawless writing. Upload your document to correct all your mistakes.

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Table of contents

When to write a summary, step 1: read the text, step 2: break the text down into sections, step 3: identify the key points in each section, step 4: write the summary, step 5: check the summary against the article, frequently asked questions.

There are many situations in which you might have to summarise an article or other source:

  • As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material
  • To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
  • To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review

When you’re writing an academic text like an essay , research paper , or dissertation , you’ll integrate sources in a variety of ways. You might use a brief quote to support your point, or paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.

But it’s often appropriate to summarize a whole article or chapter if it is especially relevant to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you analyse or critique it.

In any case, the goal of summarising is to give your reader a clear understanding of the original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.

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You should read the article more than once to make sure you’ve thoroughly understood it. It’s often effective to read in three stages:

  • Scan the article quickly to get a sense of its topic and overall shape.
  • Read the article carefully, highlighting important points and taking notes as you read.
  • Skim the article again to confirm you’ve understood the key points, and reread any particularly important or difficult passages.

There are some tricks you can use to identify the key points as you read:

  • Start by reading the abstract . This already contains the author’s own summary of their work, and it tells you what to expect from the article.
  • Pay attention to headings and subheadings . These should give you a good sense of what each part is about.
  • Read the introduction and the conclusion together and compare them: What did the author set out to do, and what was the outcome?

To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, break it down into smaller sections.

If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably already organised into clearly marked sections, usually including an introduction, methods, results, and discussion.

Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. But most articles and essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.

Now it’s time go through each section and pick out its most important points. What does your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or conclusion of the article?

Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the article. Your goal is to extract the essential points, leaving out anything that can be considered background information or supplementary detail.

In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in each part.

If the article takes a different form, you might have to think more carefully about what points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.

In that case, pay particular attention to the thesis statement —the central claim that the author wants us to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic sentences that signal the main idea of each paragraph.

Now that you know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you need to put them in your own words.

To avoid plagiarism and show you’ve understood the article, it’s essential to properly paraphrase the author’s ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, not even just a sentence or two.

The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your own understanding of the author’s key points.

Examples of article summaries

Let’s take a look at an example. Below, we summarise this article , which scientifically investigates the old saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’.

An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary assignment. However, you’ll often want to give an even more concise summary of an article.

For example, in a literature review or research paper, you may want to briefly summarize this study as part of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we can boil our summary down even further to include only the most relevant information.

Citing the source you’re summarizing

When including a summary as part of a larger text, it’s essential to properly cite the source you’re summarizing. The exact format depends on your citation style , but it usually includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the end of your paper.

You can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free citation generators.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

Finally, read through the article once more to ensure that:

  • You’ve accurately represented the author’s work
  • You haven’t missed any essential information
  • The phrasing is not too similar to any sentences in the original.

If you’re summarising many articles as part of your own work, it may be a good idea to use a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly cited. Just be sure to use one that’s safe and reliable.

A summary is a short overview of the main points of an article or other source, written entirely in your own words.

Save yourself some time with the free summariser.

A summary is always much shorter than the original text. The length of a summary can range from just a few sentences to several paragraphs; it depends on the length of the article you’re summarising, and on the purpose of the summary.

With the summariser tool you can easily adjust the length of your summary.

You might have to write a summary of a source:

  • As a stand-alone assignment to prove you understand the material
  • For your own use, to keep notes on your reading
  • To provide an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review
  • In a paper , to summarise or introduce a relevant study

To avoid plagiarism when summarising an article or other source, follow these two rules:

  • Write the summary entirely in your own words by   paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
  • Reference the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

An abstract concisely explains all the key points of an academic text such as a thesis , dissertation or journal article. It should summarise the whole text, not just introduce it.

An abstract is a type of summary , but summaries are also written elsewhere in academic writing . For example, you might summarise a source in a paper , in a literature review , or as a standalone assignment.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, May 12). How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 15 February 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/working-sources/how-to-write-a-summary/

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How to Write a Research Paper Summary

Journal submission: Tips to submit better manuscripts | Paperpal

One of the most important skills you can imbibe as an academician is to know how to summarize a research paper. During your academic journey, you may need to write a summary of findings in research quite often and for varied reasons – be it to write an introduction for a peer-reviewed publication , to submit a critical review, or to simply create a useful database for future referencing.

It can be quite challenging to effectively write a research paper summary for often complex work, which is where a pre-determined workflow can help you optimize the process. Investing time in developing this skill can also help you improve your scientific acumen, increasing your efficiency and productivity at work. This article illustrates some useful advice on how to write a research summary effectively. But, what is research summary in the first place?  

A research paper summary is a crisp, comprehensive overview of a research paper, which encapsulates the purpose, findings, methods, conclusions, and relevance of a study. A well-written research paper summary is an indicator of how well you have understood the author’s work. 

Table of Contents

Draft a research paper summary in minutes with paperpal. click here to start writing.

  • 2. Invest enough time to understand the topic deeply 

Use Paperpal to summarize your research paper. Click here to get started!

  • Mistakes to avoid while writing your research paper summary 

Let Paperpal do the heavy lifting. Click here to start writing your summary now!

Frequently asked questions (faq), how to write a research paper summary.

Writing a good research paper summary comes with practice and skill. Here is some useful advice on how to write a research paper summary effectively.  

1. Determine the focus of your summary

Before you begin to write a summary of research papers, determine the aim of your research paper summary. This will give you more clarity on how to summarize a research paper, including what to highlight and where to find the information you need, which accelerates the entire process. If you are aiming for the summary to be a supporting document or a proof of principle for your current research findings, then you can look for elements that are relevant to your work.

On the other hand, if your research summary is intended to be a critical review of the research article, you may need to use a completely different lens while reading the paper and conduct your own research regarding the accuracy of the data presented. Then again, if the research summary is intended to be a source of information for future referencing, you will likely have a different approach. This makes determining the focus of your summary a key step in the process of writing an effective research paper summary. 

2. Invest enough time to understand the topic deeply

In order to author an effective research paper summary, you need to dive into the topic of the research article. Begin by doing a quick scan for relevant information under each section of the paper. The abstract is a great starting point as it helps you to quickly identify the top highlights of the research article, speeding up the process of understanding the key findings in the paper. Be sure to do a careful read of the research paper, preparing notes that describe each section in your own words to put together a summary of research example or a first draft. This will save your time and energy in revisiting the paper to confirm relevant details and ease the entire process of writing a research paper summary.

When reading papers, be sure to acknowledge and ignore any pre-conceived notions that you might have regarding the research topic. This will not only help you understand the topic better but will also help you develop a more balanced perspective, ensuring that your research paper summary is devoid of any personal opinions or biases. 

3. Keep the summary crisp, brief and engaging

A research paper summary is usually intended to highlight and explain the key points of any study, saving the time required to read through the entire article. Thus, your primary goal while compiling the summary should be to keep it as brief, crisp and readable as possible. Usually, a short introduction followed by 1-2 paragraphs is adequate for an effective research article summary. Avoid going into too much technical detail while describing the main results and conclusions of the study. Rather focus on connecting the main findings of the study to the hypothesis , which can make the summary more engaging. For example, instead of simply reporting an original finding – “the graph showed a decrease in the mortality rates…”, you can say, “there was a decline in the number of deaths, as predicted by the authors while beginning the study…” or “there was a decline in the number of deaths, which came as a surprise to the authors as this was completely unexpected…”.

Unless you are writing a critical review of the research article, the language used in your research paper summaries should revolve around reporting the findings, not assessing them. On the other hand, if you intend to submit your summary as a critical review, make sure to provide sufficient external evidence to support your final analysis. Invest sufficient time in editing and proofreading your research paper summary thoroughly to ensure you’ve captured the findings accurately. You can also get an external opinion on the preliminary draft of the research paper summary from colleagues or peers who have not worked on the research topic. 

Mistakes to avoid while writing your research paper summary

Now that you’ve understood how to summarize a research paper, watch out for these red flags while writing your summary. 

  • Not paying attention to the word limit and recommended format, especially while submitting a critical review 
  • Evaluating the findings instead of maintaining an objective , unbiased view while reading the research paper 
  • Skipping the essential editing step , which can help eliminate avoidable errors and ensure that the language does not misrepresent the findings 
  • Plagiarism, it is critical to write in your own words or paraphrase appropriately when reporting the findings in your scientific article summary 

We hope the recommendations listed above will help answer the question of how to summarize a research paper and enable you to tackle the process effectively. 

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Paperpal, an AI academic writing assistant, is designed to support academics at every step of the academic writing process. Built on over two decades of experience helping researchers get published and trained on millions of published research articles, Paperpal offers human precision at machine speed. Paperpal Copilot, with advanced generative AI features, can help academics achieve 2x the writing in half the time, while transforming how they research and write.

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How to summarize a research paper with Paperpal?

To generate your research paper summary, simply login to the platform and use the Paperpal Copilot Summary feature to create a flawless summary of your work. Here’s a step-by-step process to help you craft a summary in minutes:

  • Paste relevant research articles to be summarized into Paperpal; the AI will scan each section and extract key information.
  • In minutes, Paperpal will generate a comprehensive summary that showcases the main paper highlights while adhering to academic writing conventions.
  • Check the content to polish and refine the language, ensure your own voice, and add citations or references as needed.

The abstract and research paper summary serve similar purposes but differ in scope, length, and placement. The abstract is a concise yet detailed overview of the research, placed at the beginning of a paper, with the aim of providing readers with a quick understanding of the paper’s content and to help them decide whether to read the full article. Usually limited to a few hundred words, it highlights the main objectives, methods, results, and conclusions of the study. On the other hand, a research paper summary provides a crisp account of the entire research paper. Its purpose is to provide a brief recap for readers who may want to quickly grasp the main points of the research without reading the entire paper in detail.

The structure of a research summary can vary depending on the specific requirements or guidelines provided by the target publication or institution. A typical research summary includes the following key sections: introduction (including the research question or objective), methodology (briefly describing the research design and methods), results (summarizing the key findings), discussion (highlighting the implications and significance of the findings), and conclusion (providing a summary of the main points and potential future directions).

The summary of a research paper is important because it provides a condensed overview of the study’s purpose, methods, results, and conclusions. It allows you to quickly grasp the main points and relevance of the research without having to read the entire paper. Research summaries can also be an invaluable way to communicate research findings to a broader audience, such as policymakers or the general public.

  When writing a research paper summary, it is crucial to avoid plagiarism by properly attributing the original authors’ work. To learn how to summarize a research paper while avoiding plagiarism, follow these critical guidelines: (1) Read the paper thoroughly to understand the main points and key findings. (2) Use your own words and sentence structures to restate the information, ensuring that the research paper summary reflects your understanding of the paper. (3) Clearly indicate when you are paraphrasing or quoting directly from the original paper by using appropriate citation styles. (4) Cite the original source for any specific ideas, concepts, or data that you include in your summary. (5) Review your summary to ensure it accurately represents the research paper while giving credit to the original authors.

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Try it for free or upgrade to Paperpal Prime , which unlocks unlimited access to premium features like academic translation, paraphrasing, contextual synonyms, consistency checks, submission readiness and more. It’s like always having a professional academic editor by your side! Go beyond limitations and experience the future of academic writing. Get Paperpal Prime now at just US$12 a month!

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5 reasons for rejection after peer review, ethical research practices for research with human subjects.

  • How to Write a Conclusion for Research Papers (with Examples)
  • Publish or Perish – Understanding the Importance of Scholarly Publications in Academia

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Research Summary Examples – PDF

Research Summary Examples

A research paper analyzes a perspective or argues a point. It is an expanded essay based on your interpretation, evaluation or argument about a certain topic.

According to Sunny Empire State College , “When you write a research paper you build upon what you know about the subject and make a deliberate attempt to find out what experts know. A research paper involves surveying a field of knowledge in order to find the best possible information in that field.” Whatever type of research paper you choose to write, it should present your own ideas backed with others’ (especially experts on the field) information and data.

Every research paper has a research summary. A research summary is a brief overview of what the whole research is about. It is a professional piece of writing that describes your research to the readers. It concisely yet perfectly captures the essence of the research as a whole. You may also see What Should Be in an Executive Summary of a Report?

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Fundamentals of a Research Summary

Having a good template for a research summary is nothing if you don’t know its importance and basic function. Before you start writing your research summary, you should first know its fundamentals on the areas you need to pay attention to such as its content, style and organization.

  • The content of your research summary must briefly discuss the techniques and tools used in the research and the importance of the research as a whole. Explain how the research can be of benefit for the people.
  • To organize your research summary, each topic must be discussed in separate paragraphs. How you came up with a factual research must be briefly explained in a separate paragraph.
  • If you have a lengthy research paper, try not to write not more than 10% of the entire paper. If it’s not as lengthy, you should not write more than 300 words in your summary.

However, rules may vary according to your research professor’s standards. This is just the basic fundamentals on how to write your research summary. Also see  Thesis Outline Examples

How to Write a Research Summary

It is apparent that a research summary is a condensed version of the main idea of your research paper. Because of this, it is advised that the summary of your paper is written after you are done with your entire research. This is to ensure that all the added information in your research can be written in your summary as well and all of those that removed can be edited out. Here are a few steps on how to write a research summary:

Read your paper

It should be a fact you should know beforehand; the importance of reading your entire research paper thoroughly to write an effective research summary. Along the way, take notes of the important details and key findings that you want to highlight in your paper. This will help you organize your summary better. Remember that your research summary is a mini-paper of your study and it should contain the main ideas of your entire research.

Write a draft

For your first draft, focus on the content rather than the length of your summary. Your draft is your first outline on what to include in the final summary. Writing a draft ensures you write a clear, thorough and coherent summary of your research paper. Also see  How to Write a Rough Outline

Identify main points

Within your research paper, you must identify the major points that will encourage prospective readers to go through your research paper. These major points must thoroughly and completely explain what the paper is trying to convey.

Separate sections

Identify the differences of the main section in your paper. Write a few sentences describing the main ideas of each section. In short, you should be able to present and thoroughly describe what each main section is focused on. It should have these basic sections:

  • Introduction, brief opening statement
  • Purpose of the study
  • Data gathering method
  • Summary of findings
  • Description of recommendations with actual justification.

Combine Information

All the information you have gathered must be then used to make your summary. Remember that your summary is just an overview of your research paper as a whole. It should be not be more than 10% of your whole paper. Also see  5 Summary Writing Examples and Samples

Making The First Draft

After establishing the basic way of writing a research summary, it is a must to write a first draft. It should follow the flow of the original paper. Here’s a few steps on how to make a first draft:

First, state the research question in the introduction of your summary. This holds the ground as to the summary’s direction. Provide an explanation why your research is interesting and how it can help your target recipients.

Second, state the hypothesis you wish to prove. This will help you and your readers stay grounded on the topic at hand.

Third, briefly discuss the methodology used in your research. Discuss and describe the procedure, materials, participants, design, etc. The analysis of your data must also be included. You may also see  How to Write a Successful Thesis Proposal

Fourth, describe the results and significance of your research. And lastly, briefly discuss the key implications of your research. The results and its interpretation should directly coincide with your hypothesis.

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Editing your Research Summary

A research paper is a formal piece of writing. Your summary should be tailored to your expected readers. Say for example the prospective readers are your classmates, so the style of your paper should be clearly understood by them.

Eliminate wordiness. Avoid using unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. Write in a way it would be easier for your readers to understand. It is common for research papers to establish a word count. Avoid elongating your sentences when it has shorter versions.

Being vague in describing and explaining the points of your paper might lead to confusion in your readers part. Use specific, concrete language when presenting results. Use reliable and specific examples and references as well. You should also use scientifically accurate language to help support your claims. Avoid informal words and adjectives to describe the results of your research.

Paraphrase the information you want to include in your research paper. Direct quoting the information you have read from a different source is not oftenly used in formal writings. To give the exact credit for the information you paraphrased, follow the citation format required by your professor.

Reread your paper and let others read it as well. This way minor errors you were not able to notice can be quickly pointed out and corrected.

Research Summary Writing Tips

Your research summary should not be more than 10 pages long or not more than 10% of your original document. This keeps your research summary concise and compact. It should be short enough for your readers to read through but long enough for you to clearly explain your study.

Copy and paste

Avoid simply copy and pasting different parts of your paper into your summary. You should paraphrase parts that you want to include. As most research advisers read through all of your paper, it can easily be identified if you have copy-pasted parts from your research and might give you a bad grade.

Consider the readers

Although not a requirement from your professor, catering your summary to what the readers need is sometimes required. As some studies are given out to different influential people in the field, writing a summary that caters to the readers’ necessities might be required.

Research Article Summary Template

research article summary template

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Research Report Executive Summary Template

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Research Summary Example

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Research Summary Sample

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Research Writing Summary Tips (continuation)

Clarity and organization.

One of the common mistakes in writing a research is publishing an unclear and unpolished summary. Bear in mind that your readers are likely reading about the topic of your research for the first time, avoid unclear and uncertain explanations and a disorganized summary.

Use strong and positive language

Use precise and strong words to help strengthen the foundation of your summary. Your summary should be able to stand alone despite it being a part of the research paper. Once you have convinced your readers with the recommendations regarding the topic of your paper, the readers should be able to find concrete evidence and explanations within your summary. Avoid pleas and biased statements in your summary, but make sure you are able to relay the sense of urgency for the recommendations you have given.

Divide into parts

To make things easier for you, divide your paper into different sections and headings, much like creating an outline. With this in mind, every point should be explained limited to its essence. In this way, you avoid writing too much information about your paper in your summary.

research article summary example

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How to Write an Article Review

Last Updated: September 8, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Jake Adams . Jake Adams is an academic tutor and the owner of Simplifi EDU, a Santa Monica, California based online tutoring business offering learning resources and online tutors for academic subjects K-College, SAT & ACT prep, and college admissions applications. With over 14 years of professional tutoring experience, Jake is dedicated to providing his clients the very best online tutoring experience and access to a network of excellent undergraduate and graduate-level tutors from top colleges all over the nation. Jake holds a BS in International Business and Marketing from Pepperdine University. There are 13 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 3,065,359 times.

An article review is both a summary and an evaluation of another writer's article. Teachers often assign article reviews to introduce students to the work of experts in the field. Experts also are often asked to review the work of other professionals. Understanding the main points and arguments of the article is essential for an accurate summation. Logical evaluation of the article's main theme, supporting arguments, and implications for further research is an important element of a review . Here are a few guidelines for writing an article review.

Education specialist Alexander Peterman recommends: "In the case of a review, your objective should be to reflect on the effectiveness of what has already been written, rather than writing to inform your audience about a subject."

Things You Should Know

  • Read the article very closely, and then take time to reflect on your evaluation. Consider whether the article effectively achieves what it set out to.
  • Write out a full article review by completing your intro, summary, evaluation, and conclusion. Don't forget to add a title, too!
  • Proofread your review for mistakes (like grammar and usage), while also cutting down on needless information. [1] X Research source

Preparing to Write Your Review

Step 1 Understand what an article review is.

  • Article reviews present more than just an opinion. You will engage with the text to create a response to the scholarly writer's ideas. You will respond to and use ideas, theories, and research from your studies. Your critique of the article will be based on proof and your own thoughtful reasoning.
  • An article review only responds to the author's research. It typically does not provide any new research. However, if you are correcting misleading or otherwise incorrect points, some new data may be presented.
  • An article review both summarizes and evaluates the article.

Step 2 Think about the organization of the review article.

  • Summarize the article. Focus on the important points, claims, and information.
  • Discuss the positive aspects of the article. Think about what the author does well, good points she makes, and insightful observations.
  • Identify contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the text. Determine if there is enough data or research included to support the author's claims. Find any unanswered questions left in the article.

Step 3 Preview the article.

  • Make note of words or issues you don't understand and questions you have.
  • Look up terms or concepts you are unfamiliar with, so you can fully understand the article. Read about concepts in-depth to make sure you understand their full context.

Step 4 Read the article closely.

  • Pay careful attention to the meaning of the article. Make sure you fully understand the article. The only way to write a good article review is to understand the article.

Step 5 Put the article into your words.

  • With either method, make an outline of the main points made in the article and the supporting research or arguments. It is strictly a restatement of the main points of the article and does not include your opinions.
  • After putting the article in your own words, decide which parts of the article you want to discuss in your review. You can focus on the theoretical approach, the content, the presentation or interpretation of evidence, or the style. You will always discuss the main issues of the article, but you can sometimes also focus on certain aspects. This comes in handy if you want to focus the review towards the content of a course.
  • Review the summary outline to eliminate unnecessary items. Erase or cross out the less important arguments or supplemental information. Your revised summary can serve as the basis for the summary you provide at the beginning of your review.

Step 6 Write an outline of your evaluation.

  • What does the article set out to do?
  • What is the theoretical framework or assumptions?
  • Are the central concepts clearly defined?
  • How adequate is the evidence?
  • How does the article fit into the literature and field?
  • Does it advance the knowledge of the subject?
  • How clear is the author's writing? Don't: include superficial opinions or your personal reaction. Do: pay attention to your biases, so you can overcome them.

Writing the Article Review

Step 1 Come up with...

  • For example, in MLA , a citation may look like: Duvall, John N. "The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Mediation in DeLillo's White Noise ." Arizona Quarterly 50.3 (1994): 127-53. Print. [10] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source

Step 3 Identify the article.

  • For example: The article, "Condom use will increase the spread of AIDS," was written by Anthony Zimmerman, a Catholic priest.

Step 4 Write the introduction....

  • Your introduction should only be 10-25% of your review.
  • End the introduction with your thesis. Your thesis should address the above issues. For example: Although the author has some good points, his article is biased and contains some misinterpretation of data from others’ analysis of the effectiveness of the condom.

Step 5 Summarize the article.

  • Use direct quotes from the author sparingly.
  • Review the summary you have written. Read over your summary many times to ensure that your words are an accurate description of the author's article.

Step 6 Write your critique.

  • Support your critique with evidence from the article or other texts.
  • The summary portion is very important for your critique. You must make the author's argument clear in the summary section for your evaluation to make sense.
  • Remember, this is not where you say if you liked the article or not. You are assessing the significance and relevance of the article.
  • Use a topic sentence and supportive arguments for each opinion. For example, you might address a particular strength in the first sentence of the opinion section, followed by several sentences elaborating on the significance of the point.

Step 7 Conclude the article review.

  • This should only be about 10% of your overall essay.
  • For example: This critical review has evaluated the article "Condom use will increase the spread of AIDS" by Anthony Zimmerman. The arguments in the article show the presence of bias, prejudice, argumentative writing without supporting details, and misinformation. These points weaken the author’s arguments and reduce his credibility.

Step 8 Proofread.

  • Make sure you have identified and discussed the 3-4 key issues in the article.

Sample Article Reviews

research article summary example

Expert Q&A

Jake Adams

You Might Also Like

Write Articles

  • ↑ https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/grammarpunct/proofreading/
  • ↑ https://libguides.cmich.edu/writinghelp/articlereview
  • ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548566/
  • ↑ Jake Adams. Academic Tutor & Test Prep Specialist. Expert Interview. 24 July 2020.
  • ↑ https://guides.library.queensu.ca/introduction-research/writing/critical
  • ↑ https://www.iup.edu/writingcenter/writing-resources/organization-and-structure/creating-an-outline.html
  • ↑ https://writing.umn.edu/sws/assets/pdf/quicktips/titles.pdf
  • ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_periodicals.html
  • ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548565/
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/593/2014/06/How_to_Summarize_a_Research_Article1.pdf
  • ↑ https://www.uis.edu/learning-hub/writing-resources/handouts/learning-hub/how-to-review-a-journal-article
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/

About This Article

Jake Adams

If you have to write an article review, read through the original article closely, taking notes and highlighting important sections as you read. Next, rewrite the article in your own words, either in a long paragraph or as an outline. Open your article review by citing the article, then write an introduction which states the article’s thesis. Next, summarize the article, followed by your opinion about whether the article was clear, thorough, and useful. Finish with a paragraph that summarizes the main points of the article and your opinions. To learn more about what to include in your personal critique of the article, keep reading the article! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Write a Peer Review

research article summary example

When you write a peer review for a manuscript, what should you include in your comments? What should you leave out? And how should the review be formatted?

This guide provides quick tips for writing and organizing your reviewer report.

Review Outline

Use an outline for your reviewer report so it’s easy for the editors and author to follow. This will also help you keep your comments organized.

Think about structuring your review like an inverted pyramid. Put the most important information at the top, followed by details and examples in the center, and any additional points at the very bottom.

research article summary example

Here’s how your outline might look:

1. Summary of the research and your overall impression

In your own words, summarize what the manuscript claims to report. This shows the editor how you interpreted the manuscript and will highlight any major differences in perspective between you and the other reviewers. Give an overview of the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses. Think about this as your “take-home” message for the editors. End this section with your recommended course of action.

2. Discussion of specific areas for improvement

It’s helpful to divide this section into two parts: one for major issues and one for minor issues. Within each section, you can talk about the biggest issues first or go systematically figure-by-figure or claim-by-claim. Number each item so that your points are easy to follow (this will also make it easier for the authors to respond to each point). Refer to specific lines, pages, sections, or figure and table numbers so the authors (and editors) know exactly what you’re talking about.

Major vs. minor issues

What’s the difference between a major and minor issue? Major issues should consist of the essential points the authors need to address before the manuscript can proceed. Make sure you focus on what is  fundamental for the current study . In other words, it’s not helpful to recommend additional work that would be considered the “next step” in the study. Minor issues are still important but typically will not affect the overall conclusions of the manuscript. Here are some examples of what would might go in the “minor” category:

  • Missing references (but depending on what is missing, this could also be a major issue)
  • Technical clarifications (e.g., the authors should clarify how a reagent works)
  • Data presentation (e.g., the authors should present p-values differently)
  • Typos, spelling, grammar, and phrasing issues

3. Any other points

Confidential comments for the editors.

Some journals have a space for reviewers to enter confidential comments about the manuscript. Use this space to mention concerns about the submission that you’d want the editors to consider before sharing your feedback with the authors, such as concerns about ethical guidelines or language quality. Any serious issues should be raised directly and immediately with the journal as well.

This section is also where you will disclose any potentially competing interests, and mention whether you’re willing to look at a revised version of the manuscript.

Do not use this space to critique the manuscript, since comments entered here will not be passed along to the authors.  If you’re not sure what should go in the confidential comments, read the reviewer instructions or check with the journal first before submitting your review. If you are reviewing for a journal that does not offer a space for confidential comments, consider writing to the editorial office directly with your concerns.

Get this outline in a template

Giving Feedback

Giving feedback is hard. Giving effective feedback can be even more challenging. Remember that your ultimate goal is to discuss what the authors would need to do in order to qualify for publication. The point is not to nitpick every piece of the manuscript. Your focus should be on providing constructive and critical feedback that the authors can use to improve their study.

If you’ve ever had your own work reviewed, you already know that it’s not always easy to receive feedback. Follow the golden rule: Write the type of review you’d want to receive if you were the author. Even if you decide not to identify yourself in the review, you should write comments that you would be comfortable signing your name to.

In your comments, use phrases like “ the authors’ discussion of X” instead of “ your discussion of X .” This will depersonalize the feedback and keep the focus on the manuscript instead of the authors.

General guidelines for effective feedback

research article summary example

  • Justify your recommendation with concrete evidence and specific examples.
  • Be specific so the authors know what they need to do to improve.
  • Be thorough. This might be the only time you read the manuscript.
  • Be professional and respectful. The authors will be reading these comments too.
  • Remember to say what you liked about the manuscript!

research article summary example

Don’t

  • Recommend additional experiments or  unnecessary elements that are out of scope for the study or for the journal criteria.
  • Tell the authors exactly how to revise their manuscript—you don’t need to do their work for them.
  • Use the review to promote your own research or hypotheses.
  • Focus on typos and grammar. If the manuscript needs significant editing for language and writing quality, just mention this in your comments.
  • Submit your review without proofreading it and checking everything one more time.

Before and After: Sample Reviewer Comments

Keeping in mind the guidelines above, how do you put your thoughts into words? Here are some sample “before” and “after” reviewer comments

✗ Before

“The authors appear to have no idea what they are talking about. I don’t think they have read any of the literature on this topic.”

✓ After

“The study fails to address how the findings relate to previous research in this area. The authors should rewrite their Introduction and Discussion to reference the related literature, especially recently published work such as Darwin et al.”

“The writing is so bad, it is practically unreadable. I could barely bring myself to finish it.”

“While the study appears to be sound, the language is unclear, making it difficult to follow. I advise the authors work with a writing coach or copyeditor to improve the flow and readability of the text.”

“It’s obvious that this type of experiment should have been included. I have no idea why the authors didn’t use it. This is a big mistake.”

“The authors are off to a good start, however, this study requires additional experiments, particularly [type of experiment]. Alternatively, the authors should include more information that clarifies and justifies their choice of methods.”

Suggested Language for Tricky Situations

You might find yourself in a situation where you’re not sure how to explain the problem or provide feedback in a constructive and respectful way. Here is some suggested language for common issues you might experience.

What you think : The manuscript is fatally flawed. What you could say: “The study does not appear to be sound” or “the authors have missed something crucial”.

What you think : You don’t completely understand the manuscript. What you could say : “The authors should clarify the following sections to avoid confusion…”

What you think : The technical details don’t make sense. What you could say : “The technical details should be expanded and clarified to ensure that readers understand exactly what the researchers studied.”

What you think: The writing is terrible. What you could say : “The authors should revise the language to improve readability.”

What you think : The authors have over-interpreted the findings. What you could say : “The authors aim to demonstrate [XYZ], however, the data does not fully support this conclusion. Specifically…”

What does a good review look like?

Check out the peer review examples at F1000 Research to see how other reviewers write up their reports and give constructive feedback to authors.

Time to Submit the Review!

Be sure you turn in your report on time. Need an extension? Tell the journal so that they know what to expect. If you need a lot of extra time, the journal might need to contact other reviewers or notify the author about the delay.

Tip: Building a relationship with an editor

You’ll be more likely to be asked to review again if you provide high-quality feedback and if you turn in the review on time. Especially if it’s your first review for a journal, it’s important to show that you are reliable. Prove yourself once and you’ll get asked to review again!

  • Getting started as a reviewer
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The contents of the Peer Review Center are also available as a live, interactive training session, complete with slides, talking points, and activities. …

The contents of the Writing Center are also available as a live, interactive training session, complete with slides, talking points, and activities. …

There’s a lot to consider when deciding where to submit your work. Learn how to choose a journal that will help your study reach its audience, while reflecting your values as a researcher…

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How to Review a Journal Article

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For many kinds of assignments, like a  literature review , you may be asked to offer a critique or review of a journal article. This is an opportunity for you as a scholar to offer your  qualified opinion  and  evaluation  of how another scholar has composed their article, argument, and research. That means you will be expected to go beyond a simple  summary  of the article and evaluate it on a deeper level. As a college student, this might sound intimidating. However, as you engage with the research process, you are becoming immersed in a particular topic, and your insights about the way that topic is presented are valuable and can contribute to the overall conversation surrounding your topic.

IMPORTANT NOTE!!

Some disciplines, like Criminal Justice, may only want you to summarize the article without including your opinion or evaluation. If your assignment is to summarize the article only, please see our literature review handout.

Before getting started on the critique, it is important to review the article thoroughly and critically. To do this, we recommend take notes,  annotating , and reading the article several times before critiquing. As you read, be sure to note important items like the thesis, purpose, research questions, hypotheses, methods, evidence, key findings, major conclusions, tone, and publication information. Depending on your writing context, some of these items may not be applicable.

Questions to Consider

To evaluate a source, consider some of the following questions. They are broken down into different categories, but answering these questions will help you consider what areas to examine. With each category, we recommend identifying the strengths and weaknesses in each since that is a critical part of evaluation.

Evaluating Purpose and Argument

  • How well is the purpose made clear in the introduction through background/context and thesis?
  • How well does the abstract represent and summarize the article’s major points and argument?
  • How well does the objective of the experiment or of the observation fill a need for the field?
  • How well is the argument/purpose articulated and discussed throughout the body of the text?
  • How well does the discussion maintain cohesion?

Evaluating the Presentation/Organization of Information

  • How appropriate and clear is the title of the article?
  • Where could the author have benefited from expanding, condensing, or omitting ideas?
  • How clear are the author’s statements? Challenge ambiguous statements.
  • What underlying assumptions does the author have, and how does this affect the credibility or clarity of their article?
  • How objective is the author in his or her discussion of the topic?
  • How well does the organization fit the article’s purpose and articulate key goals?

Evaluating Methods

  • How appropriate are the study design and methods for the purposes of the study?
  • How detailed are the methods being described? Is the author leaving out important steps or considerations?
  • Have the procedures been presented in enough detail to enable the reader to duplicate them?

Evaluating Data

  • Scan and spot-check calculations. Are the statistical methods appropriate?
  • Do you find any content repeated or duplicated?
  • How many errors of fact and interpretation does the author include? (You can check on this by looking up the references the author cites).
  • What pertinent literature has the author cited, and have they used this literature appropriately?

Following, we have an example of a summary and an evaluation of a research article. Note that in most literature review contexts, the summary and evaluation would be much shorter. This extended example shows the different ways a student can critique and write about an article.

Chik, A. (2012). Digital gameplay for autonomous foreign language learning: Gamers’ and language teachers’ perspectives. In H. Reinders (ed.),  Digital games in language learning and teaching  (pp. 95-114). Eastbourne, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Be sure to include the full citation either in a reference page or near your evaluation if writing an  annotated bibliography .

In Chik’s article “Digital Gameplay for Autonomous Foreign Language Learning: Gamers’ and Teachers’ Perspectives”, she explores the ways in which “digital gamers manage gaming and gaming-related activities to assume autonomy in their foreign language learning,” (96) which is presented in contrast to how teachers view the “pedagogical potential” of gaming. The research was described as an “umbrella project” consisting of two parts. The first part examined 34 language teachers’ perspectives who had limited experience with gaming (only five stated they played games regularly) (99). Their data was recorded through a survey, class discussion, and a seven-day gaming trial done by six teachers who recorded their reflections through personal blog posts. The second part explored undergraduate gaming habits of ten Hong Kong students who were regular gamers. Their habits were recorded through language learning histories, videotaped gaming sessions, blog entries of gaming practices, group discussion sessions, stimulated recall sessions on gaming videos, interviews with other gamers, and posts from online discussion forums. The research shows that while students recognize the educational potential of games and have seen benefits of it in their lives, the instructors overall do not see the positive impacts of gaming on foreign language learning.

The summary includes the article’s purpose, methods, results, discussion, and citations when necessary.

This article did a good job representing the undergraduate gamers’ voices through extended quotes and stories. Particularly for the data collection of the undergraduate gamers, there were many opportunities for an in-depth examination of their gaming practices and histories. However, the representation of the teachers in this study was very uneven when compared to the students. Not only were teachers labeled as numbers while the students picked out their own pseudonyms, but also when viewing the data collection, the undergraduate students were more closely examined in comparison to the teachers in the study. While the students have fifteen extended quotes describing their experiences in their research section, the teachers only have two of these instances in their section, which shows just how imbalanced the study is when presenting instructor voices.

Some research methods, like the recorded gaming sessions, were only used with students whereas teachers were only asked to blog about their gaming experiences. This creates a richer narrative for the students while also failing to give instructors the chance to have more nuanced perspectives. This lack of nuance also stems from the emphasis of the non-gamer teachers over the gamer teachers. The non-gamer teachers’ perspectives provide a stark contrast to the undergraduate gamer experiences and fits neatly with the narrative of teachers not valuing gaming as an educational tool. However, the study mentioned five teachers that were regular gamers whose perspectives are left to a short section at the end of the presentation of the teachers’ results. This was an opportunity to give the teacher group a more complex story, and the opportunity was entirely missed.

Additionally, the context of this study was not entirely clear. The instructors were recruited through a master’s level course, but the content of the course and the institution’s background is not discussed. Understanding this context helps us understand the course’s purpose(s) and how those purposes may have influenced the ways in which these teachers interpreted and saw games. It was also unclear how Chik was connected to this masters’ class and to the students. Why these particular teachers and students were recruited was not explicitly defined and also has the potential to skew results in a particular direction.

Overall, I was inclined to agree with the idea that students can benefit from language acquisition through gaming while instructors may not see the instructional value, but I believe the way the research was conducted and portrayed in this article made it very difficult to support Chik’s specific findings.

Some professors like you to begin an evaluation with something positive but isn’t always necessary.

The evaluation is clearly organized and uses transitional phrases when moving to a new topic.

This evaluation includes a summative statement that gives the overall impression of the article at the end, but this can also be placed at the beginning of the evaluation.

This evaluation mainly discusses the representation of data and methods. However, other areas, like organization, are open to critique.

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How to Write Article Summaries, Reviews & Critiques

  • Writing an article SUMMARY
  • Writing an article REVIEW

Writing an article CRITIQUE

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A critique asks you to evaluate an article and the author’s argument. You will need to look critically at what the author is claiming, evaluate the research methods, and look for possible problems with, or applications of, the researcher’s claims.

Introduction

Give an overview of the author’s main points and how the author supports those points. Explain what the author found and describe the process they used to arrive at this conclusion.

Body Paragraphs

Interpret the information from the article:

  • Does the author review previous studies? Is current and relevant research used?
  • What type of research was used – empirical studies, anecdotal material, or personal observations?
  • Was the sample too small to generalize from?
  • Was the participant group lacking in diversity (race, gender, age, education, socioeconomic status, etc.)
  • For instance, volunteers gathered at a health food store might have different attitudes about nutrition than the population at large.
  • How useful does this work seem to you? How does the author suggest the findings could be applied and how do you believe they could be applied?
  • How could the study have been improved in your opinion?
  • Does the author appear to have any biases (related to gender, race, class, or politics)?
  • Is the writing clear and easy to follow? Does the author’s tone add to or detract from the article?
  • How useful are the visuals (such as tables, charts, maps, photographs) included, if any? How do they help to illustrate the argument? Are they confusing or hard to read?
  • What further research might be conducted on this subject?

Try to synthesize the pieces of your critique to emphasize your own main points about the author’s work, relating the researcher’s work to your own knowledge or to topics being discussed in your course.

From the Center for Academic Excellence (opens in a new window), University of Saint Joseph Connecticut

Additional Resources

All links open in a new window.

Writing an Article Critique (from The University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center)

How to Critique an Article (from Essaypro.com)

How to Write an Article Critique (from EliteEditing.com.au)

How to Write an Article Critique Like a Pro (from Citetotal.com)

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  • Last Updated: Aug 16, 2023 11:47 AM
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research article summary example

An article review is a critical evaluation of a scholarly or scientific piece, which aims to summarize its main ideas, assess its contributions, and provide constructive feedback. A well-written review not only benefits the author of the article under scrutiny but also serves as a valuable resource for fellow researchers and scholars. Follow these steps to create an effective and informative article review:

1. Understand the purpose: Before diving into the article, it is important to understand the intent of writing a review. This helps in focusing your thoughts, directing your analysis, and ensuring your review adds value to the academic community.

2. Read the article thoroughly: Carefully read the article multiple times to get a complete understanding of its content, arguments, and conclusions. As you read, take notes on key points, supporting evidence, and any areas that require further exploration or clarification.

3. Summarize the main ideas: In your review’s introduction, briefly outline the primary themes and arguments presented by the author(s). Keep it concise but sufficiently informative so that readers can quickly grasp the essence of the article.

4. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses: In subsequent paragraphs, assess the strengths and limitations of the article based on factors such as methodology, quality of evidence presented, coherence of arguments, and alignment with existing literature in the field. Be fair and objective while providing your critique.

5. Discuss any implications: Deliberate on how this particular piece contributes to or challenges existing knowledge in its discipline. You may also discuss potential improvements for future research or explore real-world applications stemming from this study.

6. Provide recommendations: Finally, offer suggestions for both the author(s) and readers regarding how they can further build on this work or apply its findings in practice.

7. Proofread and revise: Once your initial draft is complete, go through it carefully for clarity, accuracy, and coherence. Revise as necessary, ensuring your review is both informative and engaging for readers.

Sample Review:

A Critical Review of “The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health”

Introduction:

“The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health” is a timely article which investigates the relationship between social media usage and psychological well-being. The authors present compelling evidence to support their argument that excessive use of social media can result in decreased self-esteem, increased anxiety, and a negative impact on interpersonal relationships.

Strengths and weaknesses:

One of the strengths of this article lies in its well-structured methodology utilizing a variety of sources, including quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews. This approach provides a comprehensive view of the topic, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the effects of social media on mental health. However, it would have been beneficial if the authors included a larger sample size to increase the reliability of their conclusions. Additionally, exploring how different platforms may influence mental health differently could have added depth to the analysis.

Implications:

The findings in this article contribute significantly to ongoing debates surrounding the psychological implications of social media use. It highlights the potential dangers that excessive engagement with online platforms may pose to one’s mental well-being and encourages further research into interventions that could mitigate these risks. The study also offers an opportunity for educators and policy-makers to take note and develop strategies to foster healthier online behavior.

Recommendations:

Future researchers should consider investigating how specific social media platforms impact mental health outcomes, as this could lead to more targeted interventions. For practitioners, implementing educational programs aimed at promoting healthy online habits may be beneficial in mitigating the potential negative consequences associated with excessive social media use.

Conclusion:

Overall, “The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health” is an important and informative piece that raises awareness about a pressing issue in today’s digital age. Given its minor limitations, it provides valuable

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The disaster of misinformation: a review of research in social media

Sadiq muhammed t.

Department of Management Studies (DoMS), Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600036 India

Saji K. Mathew

The spread of misinformation in social media has become a severe threat to public interests. For example, several incidents of public health concerns arose out of social media misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Against the backdrop of the emerging IS research focus on social media and the impact of misinformation during recent events such as the COVID-19, Australian Bushfire, and the USA elections, we identified disaster, health, and politics as specific domains for a research review on social media misinformation. Following a systematic review process, we chose 28 articles, relevant to the three themes, for synthesis. We discuss the characteristics of misinformation in the three domains, the methodologies that have been used by researchers, and the theories used to study misinformation. We adapt an Antecedents-Misinformation-Outcomes (AMIO) framework for integrating key concepts from prior studies. Based on the AMIO framework, we further discuss the inter-relationships of concepts and the strategies to control the spread of misinformation on social media. Ours is one of the early reviews focusing on social media misinformation research, particularly on three socially sensitive domains; disaster, health, and politics. This review contributes to the emerging body of knowledge in Data Science and social media and informs strategies to combat social media misinformation.

Introduction

Information disorder in social media.

Rumors, misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information are common challenges confronting media of all types. It is, however, worse in the case of digital media, especially on social media platforms. Ease of access and use, speed of information diffusion, and difficulty in correcting false information make control of undesirable information a horrid task [ 1 ]. Alongside these challenges, social media has also been highly influential in spreading timely and useful information. For example, the recent #BlackLivesMatter movement was enabled by social media, which united concurring people's solidarity across the world when George Floyd was killed due to police brutality, and so are 2011 Arab spring in the Middle East and the 2017 #MeToo movement against sexual harassments and abuse [ 2 , 3 ]. Although, scholars have addressed information disorder in social media, a synthesis of the insights from these studies are rare.

The information which is fake or misleading and spreads unintentionally is known as misinformation [ 4 ]. Prior research on misinformation in social media has highlighted various characteristics of misinformation and interventions thereof in different contexts. The issue of misinformation has become dominant with the rise of social media, attracting scholarly attention, particularly after the 2016 USA Presidential election, when misinformation apparently influenced the election results [ 5 ]. The word 'misinformation' was listed as one of the global risks by the World Economic Forum [ 6 ]. A similar term that is popular and confusing along with misinformation is 'disinformation'. It is defined as the information that is fake or misleading, and unlike misinformation, spreads intentionally. Disinformation campaigns are often seen in a political context where state actors create them for political gains. In India, during the initial stage of COVID-19, there was reportedly a surge in fake news linking the virus outbreak to a particular religious group. This disinformation spread gained media attention as it was widely shared on social media platforms. As a result of the targeting, it eventually translated into physical violence and discriminatory treatment against members of the community in some of the Indian states [ 7 ]. 'Rumors' and 'fake news' are similar terms related to misinformation. 'Rumors' are unverified information or statements circulated with uncertainty, and 'fake news' is the misinformation that is distributed in an official news format. Source ambiguity, personal involvement, confirmation bias, and social ties are some of the rumor-causing factors. Yet another related term, mal-information, is accurate information that is used in different contexts to spread hatred or abuse of a person or a particular group. Our review focuses on misinformation that is spread through social media platforms. The words 'rumor', and 'misinformation' are used interchangeably in this paper. Further, we identify factors that cause misinformation based on a systematic review of prior studies.

Ours is one of the early attempts to review social media research on misinformation. This review focuses on three sensitive domains of disaster, health, and politics, setting three objectives: (a) to analyze previous studies to understand the impact of misinformation on the three domains (b) to identify theoretical perspectives used to examine the spread of misinformation on social media and (c) to develop a framework to study key concepts and their inter-relationships emerging from prior studies. We identified these specific areas as the impact of misinformation with regards to both speed of spread and scale of influence are high and detrimental to the public and governments. To the best of our knowledge, the review of the literature on social media misinformation themes are relatively scanty. This review contributes to an emerging body of knowledge in Data Science and informs the efforts to combat social media misinformation. Data Science is an interdisciplinary area which incorporates different areas like statistics, management, and sociology to study the data and create knowledge out of data [ 8 ]. This review will also inform future studies that aim to evaluate and compare patterns of misinformation on sensitive themes of social relevance, such as disaster, health, and politics.

The paper is structured as follows. The first section introduces misinformation in social media context. In Sect.  2 , we provide a brief overview of prior research works on misinformation and social media. Section  3 describes the research methodology, which includes details of the literature search and selection process. Section  4 discusses the analysis of spread of misinformation on social media based on three themes- disaster, health, and politics and the review findings. This includes current state of research, theoretical foundations, determinants of misinformation in social media platforms, and strategies to control the spread of misinformation. Section  5 concludes with the implications and limitations of the paper.

Social media and spread of misinformation

Misinformation arises in uncertain contexts when people are confronted with a scarcity of information they need. During unforeseen circumstances, the affected individual or community experiences nervousness or anxiety. Anxiety is one of the primary reasons behind the spread of misinformation. To overcome this tension, people tend to gather information from sources such as mainstream media and official government social media handles to verify the information they have received. When they fail to receive information from official sources, they collect related information from their peer circles or other informal sources, which would help them to control social tension [ 9 ]. Furthermore, in an emergency context, misinformation helps community members to reach a common understanding of the uncertain situation.

The echo chamber of social media

Social media has increasingly grown in power and influence and has acted as a medium to accelerate sociopolitical movements. Network effects enhance participation in social media platforms which in turn spread information (good or bad) at a faster pace compared to traditional media. Furthermore, due to a massive surge in online content consumption primarily through social media both business organizations and political parties have begun to share content that are ambiguous or fake to influence online users and their decisions for financial and political gains [ 9 , 10 ]. On the other hand, people often approach social media with a hedonic mindset, which reduces their tendency to verify the information they receive [ 9 ]. Repetitive exposure to contents that coincides with their pre-existing beliefs, increases believability and shareability of content. This process known as the echo-chamber effect [ 11 ] is fueled by confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency of the person to support information that reinforces pre-existing beliefs and neglect opposing perspectives and viewpoints other than their own.

Platforms’ structure and algorithms also have an essential role in spreading misinformation. Tiwana et al. [ 12 ] have defined platform architecture as ‘a conceptual blueprint that describes how the ecosystem is partitioned into a relatively stable platform and a complementary set of modules that are encouraged to vary, and the design rules binding on both’. Business models of these platforms are based upon maximizing user engagement. For example, in the case of Facebook or Twitter, user feed is based on their existing belief or preferences. User feeds provide users with similar content that matches their existing beliefs, thus contributing to the echo chamber effect.

Platform architecture makes the transmission and retransmission of misinformation easier [ 12 , 13 ]. For instance, WhatsApp has a one-touch forward option that enables users to forward messages simultaneously to multiple users. Earlier, a WhatsApp user could forward a message to 250 groups or users at a time, which as a measure for controlling the spread of misinformation was limited to five members in 2019. WhatsApp claimed that globally this restriction reduced message forwarding by 25% [ 14 ]. Apart from platform politics, users also have an essential role in creating or distributing misinformation. In a disaster context, people tend to share misinformation based on their subjective feeling [ 15 ].

Misinformation has the power to influence the decisions of its audience. It can change a citizen's approach toward a topic or a subject. The anti-vaccine movement on Twitter during the 2015 measles (highly communicable disease) outbreak in Disneyland, California, serves as a good example. The movement created conspiracy theories and mistrust on the State, which increased vaccine refusal rate [ 16 ]. Misinformation could even influence election of governments by manipulating citizens’ political attitudes as seen in the 2016 USA and 2017 French elections [ 17 ]. Of late, people rely heavily on Twitter and Facebook to collect the latest happenings from mainstream media [ 18 ].

Combating misinformation in social media has been a challenging task for governments in several countries. When social media influences elections [ 17 ] and health campaigns (like vaccination), governments and international agencies demand social media owners to take necessary actions to combat misinformation [ 13 , 15 ]. Platforms began to regulate bots that were used to spread misinformation. Facebook announced the filtering of their algorithms to combat misinformation, down-ranking the post flagged by their fact-checkers which will reduce the popularity of the post or page. [ 17 ]. However, misinformation has become a complicated issue due to the growth of new users and the emergence of new social media platforms. Jang et al. [ 19 ] have suggested two approaches other than governmental regulation to control misinformation literary and corrective. The literary approach proposes educating users to increase their cognitive ability to differentiate misinformation from the information. The corrective approach provides more fact-checking facilities for users. Warnings would be provided against potentially fabricated content based on crowdsourcing. Both approaches have limitations; the literary approach attracted criticism as it transfers responsibility for the spread of misinformation to citizens. The corrective approach will only have a limited impact as the volume of fabricated content escalates [ 19 – 21 ].

An overview of the literature on misinformation reveals that most investigations focus on examining the methods to combat misinformation. Social media platforms are still discovering new tools and techniques to mitigate misinformation from their platforms, this calls for a research to understand their strategies.

Review method

This research followed a systematic literature review process. The study employed a structured approach based on Webster’s Guidelines [ 22 ] to identify relevant literature on the spread of misinformation. These guidelines helped in maintaining a quality standard while selecting the literature for review. The initial stage of the study involved exploring research papers from relevant databases to understand the volumes and availability of research articles. We extended the literature search to interdisciplinary databases too. We gathered articles from Web of Science, ACM digital library, AIS electronic library, EBSCO host business source premier, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Springer link. Apart from this, a manual search was performed in Information Systems (IS) scholars' basket of journals [ 23 ] to ensure we did not miss any articles from these journals. We have also preferred articles that have Data Science and Information Systems background. The systematic review process began with keyword search using predefined keywords (Fig.  2 ). We identified related synonyms such as 'misinformation', 'rumors', 'spread', and 'social media' along with their combinations for the search process. The keyword search was on the title, abstract, and on the list of keywords. The literature search was conducted in the month of April 2020. Later, we revisited the literature in December 2021 to include latest publications from 2020 to 2021.

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Systematic literature review process

It was observed that scholarly discussion about ‘misinformation and social media’ began to appear in research after 2008. Later in 2010, the topic gained more attention when Twitter bots were used or spreading fake news on the replacement of a USA Senator [ 24 ]. Hate campaigns and fake follower activities were simultaneously growing during that period. As evident from Fig.  1 , showing number of articles published between 2005 and 2021 on misinformation in three databases: Scopus, S pringer, and EBSCO, academic engagement on misinformation seems to have gained more impetus after the 2016 US Presidential election, when social media platforms had apparently influenced the election [ 20 ].

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Articles published on misinformation during 2005–2021 (Databases; Scopus, Springer, and EBSCO)

As Data Science is an interdisciplinary field, the focus of our literature review goes beyond disciplinary boundaries. In particular, we focused on the three domains of disaster, health, and politics. This thematic focus of our review has two underlying reasons (a) the impact of misinformation through social media is sporadic and has the most damaging effects in these three domains and (b) our selection criteria in systematic review finally resulted in research papers that related to these three domains. This review has excluded platforms that are designed for professional and business users such as LinkedIn and Behance. A rational for the choice of these themes are discussed in the next section.

Inclusion–exclusion criteria

Figure  2 depicts the systematic review process followed in this study. In our preliminary search, 2148 records were retrieved from databases—all those articles were gathered onto a spreadsheet, which was manually cross-checked with the journals linked to the articles. Studies published during 2005–2021, studies published in English language, articles published from peer-reviewed journals, journals rating and papers relevant to misinformation were used as the inclusion criteria. We have excluded reviews, thesis, dissertations, and editorials; and articles on misinformation that are not akin to social media. To fetch the best from these articles, we selected articles that were from top journals, rated above three according to ABS rating and A*, A, and B according to ABDC rating. This process, while ensuring the quality of papers, also effectively shortened purview of study to 643 articles of acceptable quality. We have not performed track-back and track-forward on references. During this process, duplicate records were also identified and removed. Further screening of articles based on the title, abstract, and full text (wherever necessary)—brought down the number to 207 articles.

Further screening based on the three themes reduced the focus to 89 articles. We conducted a full-text analysis of these 89 articles. We further excluded articles that had not considered misinformation as a central theme and finally arrived at 28 articles for detailed review (Table ​ (Table1 1 ).

Reviewed articles

The selected studies used a variety of research methods to examine the misinformation on social media. Experimentation and text mining of tweets emerged as the most frequent research methods; there were 11 studies that used experimental methods, and eight used Twitter data analyses. Apart from these, there were three survey methods, two mixed methods, and case study methods each, and one opportunistic sampling and exploratory study each. The selected literature for review includes nine articles on disaster, eight on healthcare, and eleven from politics. We preferred papers for review based on three major social media platforms; Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp. These are the three social media owners with the highest transmission rates and most active users [ 25 ] and most likely platforms for misinformation propagation.

Coding procedure

Initially both the authors have manually coded the articles individually by reading full text of each article and then identified the three themes; disaster, health, and politics. We used an inductive coding approach to derive codes from the data. The intercoder reliability rate between the authors were 82.1%. Disagreement among authors related to deciding in which theme few papers fall under were discussed and a resolution was arrived at. Later we used NVIVO, a qualitative data analysis software, to analyze unstructured data to encode and categorize the themes from the articles. The codes emerged from the articles were categorized into sub-themes and later attached to the main themes; disaster, health, and politics. NVIVO produced a rank list of codes based on frequency of occurrence (“ Appendix ”). An intercoder reliability check was completed for the data by an external research scholar having a different areas of expertise to ensure reliability. The coder agreed upon 26 articles out of 28 (92.8%), which indicated a high level intercoder reliability [ 49 ]. The independent researcher’s disagreement about the code for two authors was discussed between the authors and the research scholar and a consensus was arrived at.

We initially reviewed articles separately from the categories of disaster, health, and politics. We first provide emergent issues that cut across these themes.

Social media misinformation research

Disaster, health, and politics emerged as the three domains (“ Appendix ”) where misinformation can cause severe harm, often leading to casualties or even irreversible effects. The mitigation of these effects can also demand substantial financial or human resources burden considering the scale of effect and risk of spreading negative information to the public altogether. All these areas are sensitive in nature. Further, disaster, health, and politics have gained the attention of researchers and governments as the challenges of misinformation confronting these domains are rampant. Besides sensitivity, misinformation in these areas has higher potential to exacerbate the existing crisis in society. During the 2020 Munich security conference, WHO’s Director-General noted: “We are not just fighting an epidemic; we are fighting an infodemic”, referring to the faster spread of COVID-19 misinformation than the virus [ 50 ].

More than 6000 people were hospitalized due to COVID-19 related misinformation in the first three months of 2020 [ 51 ]. As COVID-19 vaccination began, one of the popular myths was that Bill Gates wanted to use vaccines to embed microchips in people to track them and this created vaccine hesitancy among the citizens [ 52 ]. These reports show the severity of the spread of misinformation and how misinformation can aggravate a public health crisis.

Misinformation during disaster

In the context of emergency situations (unforeseen circumstances), the credibility of social media information has often been questioned [ 11 ]. When a crisis occurs, affected communities often experience a lack of localized information needed for them to make emergency decisions. This accelerates the spread of misinformation as people tend to fill this information gap with misinformation or 'improvised news' [ 9 , 24 , 25 ]. The broadcasting power of social media and re-sharing of misinformation could weaken and slow down rescue operations [ 24 , 25 ]. As the local people have more access to the disaster area, they become immediate reporters of a crisis through social media. Mainstream media comes into picture only later. However, recent incidents reveals that voluntary reporting of this kind has begun to affect rescue operations negatively as it often acts as a collective rumor mill [ 9 ], which propagates misinformation. During the 2018 floods in the South-Indian state of Kerala a fake video on Mullaperiyar Dam leakage created unnecessary panic among the citizens, thus negatively impacting the rescue operations [ 53 ]. Information from mainstream media is relatively more reliable as they have traditional gatekeepers such as peer reviewers and editors who cross-check the information source before publication. Chua et al. [ 28 ] found that a major chunk of corrective tweets were retweeted from mainstream news media, thus mainstream media is considered as a preferred rumor correction channel, where they attempt to correct misinformation with the right information.

Characterizing disaster misinformation

Oh et al. [ 9 ] studied citizen-driven information processing based on three social crises using rumor theory. The main characteristic of a crisis is the complexity of information processing and sharing [ 9 , 24 ]. A task is considered complex when characterized by increase in information load, information diversity or rate of information change [ 54 ]. Information overload and information dearth are the two grave concerns that interrupt the communication between the affected community and a rescue team. Information overload, where too many enquiries and fake news distract a response team, slows them down to recognize valid information [ 9 , 27 ]. According to Balan and Mathew [ 55 ] information overload occurs when volume of information such as complexity of words and multiple languages that exceeds and cannot be processed by a human being. Here information dearth in our context is the lack of localized information that is supposed to help the affected community to make emergency decisions. When the official government communication channels or mainstream media cannot fulfill citizen's needs, they resort to information from their social media peers [ 9 , 27 , 29 ].

In a social crisis context, Tamotsu Shibutani [ 56 ] defines rumoring as collective sharing and exchange of information, which helps the community members to reach a common understanding about the crisis situation [ 30 ]. This mechanism works in social media, which creates information dearth and information overload. Anxiety, information ambiguity (source ambiguity and content ambiguity), personal involvement, and social ties are the rumor-causing variables in a crisis context [ 9 , 27 ]. In general, anxiety is a negative feeling caused by distress or stressful situation, which fabricates or produces adverse outcomes [ 57 ]. In the context of a crisis or emergency, a community may experience anxiety in the absence of reliable information or in other cases when confronted with overload of information, making it difficult to take appropriate decisions. Under such circumstances, people may tend to rely on rumors as a primary source of information. The influence level of anxiety is higher during a community crisis than during a business crisis [ 9 ]. However, anxiety, as an attribute, varies based on the nature of platforms. For example, Oh et al. [ 9 ] found that the Twitter community do not fall into social pressure as like WhatsApp community [ 30 ]. Simon et al. [ 30 ] developed a model of rumor retransmission on social media and identified information ambiguity, anxiety and personal involvement as motives for rumormongering. Attractiveness is another rumor-causing variable. It occurs when aesthetically appealing visual aids or designs capture a receiver’s attention. Here believability matters more than the content’s reliability or the truth of the information received.

The second stage of the spread of misinformation is misinformation retransmission. Apart from the rumor-causing variables that are reported in Oh et al. [ 9 ], Liu et al. [ 13 ] found senders credibility and attractiveness as significant variables related to misinformation retransmission. Personal involvement and content ambiguity can also affect misinformation transmission [ 13 ]. Abdullah et al. [ 25 ] explored retweeter's motive on the Twitter platform to spread disaster information. Content relevance, early information [ 27 , 31 ], trustworthiness of the content, emotional influence [ 30 ], retweet count, pro-social behavior (altruistic behavior among the citizens during the crisis), and the need to inform their circle are the factors that drive users’ retweet [ 25 ]. Lee et al. [ 26 ] have also examined the impact of Twitter features on message diffusion based on the 2013 Boston marathon tragedy. The study reported that during crisis events (especially during disasters), a tweet that has less reaction time (time between the crisis and initial tweet) and had higher impact than other tweets. This shows that to an extent, misinformation can be controlled if officials could communicate at the early stage of a crisis [ 27 ]. Liu et al. [ 13 ] showed that tweets with hashtags influence spread of misinformation. Further, Lee et al. [ 26 ] found that tweets with no hashtags had more influence due to contextual differences. For instance, usage of hashtags for marketing or advertising has a positive impact, while in the case of disaster or emergency situations, usage of hashtags (as in case of Twitter) has a negative impact. Messages with no hashtag get widely diffused when compared to messages with the hashtag [ 26 ].

Oh et al. [ 15 ] explored the behavioral aspects of social media participants that led to retransmission and spread of misinformation. They found that when people believe a threatening piece of misinformation they received, they are more likely to spread it, and they take necessary safety measures (sometimes even extreme actions). Repetition of the same misinformation from different sources also makes it more believable [ 28 ]. However, when they realize the received information was false they were less likely to share it with others [ 13 , 26 ]. The characteristics of the platform used to deliver the misinformation also matters. For instance, numbers of likes and shares of the information increases the believability of the social media post [ 47 ].

In summary, we found that platform architecture also has an essential role in spreading and believability of misinformation. While conducting this systematic literature review, we observed that more studies on disaster and misinformation are based on the Twitter platform. The six papers out of nine that we reviewed on disaster area were based on the Twitter platform. When a message was delivered in video format, it had a higher impact compared to audio or text messages. If the message had a religious or cultural narrative, it led to behavioral action (danger control response) [ 15 ]. Users were more likely to spread misinformation through WhatsApp than Twitter. It was difficult to find the source of shared information on WhatsApp [ 30 ].

Misinformation related to healthcare

From our review, we found two systematic literature reviews that discusses health-related misinformation on social media. Yang et al. [ 58 ] explores the characteristics, impact and influences of health misinformation on social media. Wang et al. [ 59 ] addresses health misinformation related to vaccines and infectious diseases. This review shows that health-related misinformation, especially on M.M.R. vaccine and autism are largely spreading on social media and the government is unable to control it.

The spread of health misinformation is an emerging issue facing public health authorities. Health misinformation could delay proper treatment to patients, which could further add more casualties to the public health domain [ 28 , 59 , 60 ]. Often people tend to believe health-related information that is shared by their peers. Some of them tend to share their treatment experience or traditional remedies online. This information could be in a different context and may not be even accurate [ 33 , 34 ]. Compared to health-related websites, the language used to detail the health information shared on social media will be simple and may not include essential details [ 35 , 37 ]. Some studies reported that conspiracy theories and pseudoscience have escalated casualties [ 33 ]. Pseudoscience is the term referred to as the false claim, which pretends as if the shared misinformation has scientific evidence. The anti-vaccination movement on Twitter is one of the examples of pseudoscience [ 61 ]. Here the user might have shared the information due to the lack of scientific knowledge [ 35 ].

Characterizing healthcare misinformation

The attributes that characterize healthcare misinformation are distinctly different from other domains. Chua and Banerjee, [ 37 ] identified the characteristics of health misinformation as dread and wish. Dread is the rumor which creates more panic and unpleasant consequences. For example, in the wake of COVID-19, misinformation was widely shared on social media, which claimed that children 'died on the spot' after the mass COVID-19 vaccination program in Senegal, West Africa [ 61 ]. This message created panic among the citizens, as the misinformation was shared more than 7000 times on Facebook [ 61 ]. Wish is the type of rumor that gives hope to the receiver (e.g.,: rumor on free medicine distribution) [ 62 ]. Dread rumor looks more trustworthy and more likely to get viral. Dread rumor was the cause of violence against a minority group in India during COVID-19 [ 7 ]. Chua and Banerjee, [ 32 ] added pictorial and textual representations as the characteristics of health misinformation. The rumor that contains only text is textual rumor. Pictorial rumor on the other hand contains both text and images. However, Chua and Banerjee, [ 32 ] found that users prefer textual rumor than pictorial. Unlike rumors that are circulated during a natural disaster, health misinformation will be long-lasting, and it can spread cutting across boundaries. Personal involvement (the importance of information for both sender and receiver), rumor type and presence of counter rumor are some of the variables that can escalate users’ trusting and sharing behavior related to rumor [ 37 ]. The study of Madraki et al. [ 46 ] study on COVID-19 misinformation /disinformation reported that COVID-19 misinformation on social media differs significantly based on the languages, countries and their culture and beliefs. Acceptance of social media platforms as well as Governmental censorship also play an important role here.

Widespread misinformation could also change collective opinion [ 29 ]. Online users’ epistemic beliefs could control their sharing decisions. Chua and Banerjee, [ 32 ] argued that epistemologically naïve users (users who think knowledge can be acquired easily) are the type of users who accelerate the spread of misinformation on platforms. Those who read or share the misinformation are not likely to follow it [ 37 ]. Gu and Hong [ 34 ] examined health misinformation on mobile social media context. Mobile internet users are different from large screen users. The mobile phone user might have a more emotional attachment toward the gadget. It also motivates them to believe received misinformation. The corrective effort focused on large screen users may not work with mobile phone users or small screen users. Chua and Banerjee [ 32 ] suggested that simplified sharing options of platforms also motivate users to share the received misinformation before validating it. Shahi et al. [ 47 ] found that misinformation is also propagated or shared even by the verified Twitter handles. They become a part of misinformation transmission either by creating it or endorsing it by liking or sharing the information.

The focus of existing studies is heavily based on data from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, although other platforms too escalate the spread of misinformation. Such a phenomenon was evident in the wake of COVID-19 as an intense trend of misinformation spread was reported on WhatsApp, TikTok, and Instagram.

Social media misinformation and politics

There have been several studies on the influence of misinformation on politics across the world [ 43 , 44 ]. Political misinformation has been predominantly used to influence the voters. The USA Presidential election of 2016, French election of 2017 and Indian elections in 2019 have been reported as examples where misinformation has influenced election process [ 15 , 17 , 45 ]. During the 2016 USA election, the partisan effect was a key challenge, where false information was presented as if it was from an authorized source [ 39 ]. Based on a user's prior behavior on the platform, algorithms can manipulate the user's feed [ 40 ]. In a political context, fake news can create more harm as it can influence the voters and the public. Although, fake news has less ‘life’, it's consequences may not be short living. Verification of fake news takes time and by the time verification results are shared, fake news could achieve its goal [ 43 , 48 , 63 ].

Characterizing misinformation in politics

Confirmation bias has a dominant role in social media misinformation related to politics. Readers are more likely to read and engage with the information that confirms their preexisting beliefs and political affiliations and reject information that challenges it [ 46 , 48 ]. For example, in the 2016 USA election, Pro-Trump fake news was accepted by Republicans [ 19 ]. Misinformation spreads quickly among people who have similar ideologies [ 19 ]. The nature of interface also could escalate the spread of misinformation. Kim and Dennis [ 36 ] investigated the influence of platforms' information presentation format and reported that social media platforms indirectly force users to accept certain information; they present information such that little importance is given to the source of information. This presentation is manipulative as people tend to believe information from a reputed source and are more likely to reject information that is from a less-known source [ 42 ].

Pennycook et al. [ 39 ], and Garrett and Poulsen [ 40 ] argued that warning tags (or flagging) on the headline can reduce the spread of misinformation. However, it is not practical to assign warning tags to all misinformation as it gets generated faster than valid information. The fact-checking process in social media also takes time. Hence, people tend to believe that the headlines which do not have warning tags are true and the idea of warning tags will thus not serve any purpose [ 39 ]. Furthermore, it could increase the reader's belief in warning tags and lead to misperception [ 39 ]. Readers tend to believe that all information is verified and consider untagged false information as more accurate. This phenomenon is known as the implied truth effect [ 39 ]. In this case, source reputation rating will influence the credibility of the information. The reader gives less importance to the source that has a low rating [ 17 , 50 ].

Theoretical perspectives of social media misinformation

We identified six theories among the articles we reviewed in relation to social media misinformation. We found rumor theory was used most frequently among all the studies chosen for our review; the theory was used in four articles as a theoretical foundation [ 9 , 11 , 13 , 37 , 43 ]. Oh et al. [ 9 ], studied citizen-driven information processing on Twitter using rumor theory in three social crises. This paper identified four key variables (source ambiguity, personal involvement, and anxiety) that spread misinformation. The authors further examined the acceptance of hate rumors and the aftermath of community crisis based on the Bangalore mass exodus of 2012. Liu et al. [ 13 ], examined the reason behind the retransmission of messages using rumor theory in disasters. Hazel Kwon and Raghav Rao [ 43 ] investigated how internet surveillance by the government impacts citizens’ involvement with cyber-rumors during a homeland security threat. Diffusion theory has also been used in IS research to discern the adoption of technological innovation. Researchers have used diffusion theory to study the retweeting behavior among Twitter users (tweet diffusion) during extreme events [ 26 ]. This research investigated information diffusion during extreme events based on four major elements of diffusion: innovation, time, communication channels and social systems. Kim et al. [ 36 ] examined the effect of rating news sources on users’ belief in social media articles based on three different rating mechanisms expert rating, user article rating and user source rating. Reputation theory was used to show how users would discern cognitive biases in expert ratings.

Murungi et al. [ 38 ] used rhetorical theory to argue that fact-checkers have less effectiveness on fake news that spreads on social media platforms. The study proposed a different approaches by focusing on underlying belief structure that accepts misinformation. The theory was used to identify fake news and socially constructed beliefs in the context of Alabama’s senatorial election in 2017. Using third person effect as the theoretical ground, the characteristics of rumor corrections on Twitter platform have also been examined in the context of death hoax of Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew [ 28 ]. This paper explored the motives behind collective rumor and identified the key characteristics of collective rumor correction. Using situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), Paek and Hove [ 44 ] examined how government could effectively respond to risk-related rumors during national-level crises in the context of food safety rumor. Refuting rumor, denying it and attacking the source of rumor are the three rumor response strategies suggested by the authors to counter rumor-mongering (Table ​ (Table2 2 ).

Theories used in social media misinformation research

Determinants of misinformation in social media platforms

Figure  3 depicts the concepts that emerged from our review using a framework of Antecedents-Misinformation-Outcomes (AMIO) framework, an approach we adapt from Smith HJ et al. [ 66 ]. Originally developed to study information privacy, the Antecedent-Privacy-Concerns-Outcomes (APCO) framework provided a nomological canvas to present determinants, mediators and outcome variables pertaining to information privacy. Following this canvas, we discuss the antecedents of misinformation, mediators of misinformation and misinformation outcomes, as they emerged from prior studies (Fig.  3 ).

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Determinants of misinformation

Anxiety, source ambiguity, trustworthiness, content ambiguity, personal involvement, social ties, confirmation bias, attractiveness, illiteracy, ease of sharing options and device attachment emerged as the variables determining misinformation in social media.

Anxiety is the emotional feeling of the person who sends or receives the information. If the person is anxious about the information received, he or she is more likely to share or spread misinformation [ 9 ]. Source ambiguity deals with the origin of the message. When the person is convinced of the source of information, it increases his trustworthiness and the person shares it. Content ambiguity addresses the content clarity of the information [ 9 , 13 ]. Personal involvement denotes how much the information is important for both the sender and receiver [ 9 ]. Social ties, information shared by a family member or social peers will influence the person to share the information [ 9 , 13 ]. From prior literature, it is understood that confirmation bias is one of the root causes of political misinformation. Research on attractiveness of the received information reveals that users tend to believe and share the information that is received on her or his personal device [ 34 ]. After receiving the misinformation from various sources, users accept it based on their existing beliefs, and social, cognitive factors and political factors. Oh et al. [ 15 ] observed that during crises, people by default have a tendency to believe unverified information especially when it helps them to make sense of the situation. Misinformation has significant effects on individuals and society. Loss of lives [ 9 , 15 , 28 , 30 ], economic loss [ 9 , 44 ], loss of health [ 32 , 35 ] and loss of reputation [ 38 , 43 ] are the major outcome of misinformation emerged from our review.

Strategies for controlling the spread of misinformation

Discourse on social media misinformation mitigation has resulted in prioritization of strategies such as early communication from the officials and use of scientific evidence [ 9 , 35 ]. When people realize that the received information or message is false, they are less likely to share that information with others [ 15 ]. Other strategies are 'rumor refutation—reducing citizens' intention to spread misinformation by real information which reduces their uncertainty and serves to control misinformation [ 44 ]. Rumor correction models for social media platforms also employ algorithms and crowdsourcing [ 28 ]. Majority of the papers that we have reviewed suggested fact-checking by experts, source rating of the received information, attaching warning tags to the headlines or entire news [ 36 ], and flagging content by the platform owners [ 40 ] as the strategies to control the spread of misinformation. Studies on controlling misinformation in the public health context showed that the government could also seek the help of public health professionals to mitigate misinformation [ 31 ].

However, the aforementioned strategies have been criticized for several limitations. Most papers mentioned confirmation bias as having a significant impact on the misinformation mitigation strategies, especially in the political context where people tend to believe the information that matches their prior belief. Garrett and Poulsen [ 40 ] argued that during an emergency situation, misinformation recipient may not be able to characterize the misinformation as true or false. Thus, providing alternative explanation or the real information to the users have more effect than providing fact-checking report. Studies by Garrett and Poulsen [ 40 ], and Pennycook et al. [ 39 ] reveal a drawback of attaching warning tags to news headlines. Once the flagging or tagging of the information is introduced, the information with the absence of tags will be considered as true or reliable information. This creates an implied truth effect. Further, it is also not always practical to evaluate all social media posts. Similarly, Kim and Dennis [ 36 ] studied fake news flagging and found that fake news flags did not influence users’ belief. However, they created cognitive dissonance and users were in search of the truthfulness of the headline. Later in 2017 Facebook discontinued the fake news flagging service owing to its limitations [ 45 ]

Key research gaps and future directions

Although, misinformation is a multi-sectoral issue, our systematic review observed that interdisciplinary research on social media misinformation is relatively scarce. ‘Confirmation bias’ is one of the most significant behavioral problem that motivates the spread of misinformation. However, lack of research on it reveals the scope for future interdisciplinary research across the fields of Data Science, Information Systems and Psychology in domains such as politics and health care. In the disaster context, there is a scope for study on the behavior of a first respondent and an emergency manager to understand their information exchange pattern with the public. Similarly, future researchers could analyze communication patterns between citizens and frontline workers in the public health context, which may be useful to design counter-misinformation campaigns and awareness interventions. Since information disorder is a multi-sectoral issue, researchers need to understand misinformation patterns among multiple government departments for coordinated counter-misinformation intervention.

There is a further dearth of studies on institutional responses to control misinformation. To fill the gap, future studies could concentrate on the analysis of governmental and organizational interventions to control misinformation at the level of policies, regulatory mechanisms, and communication strategies. For example, in India there is no specific law against misinformation but there are some provisions in the Information Technology Act (IT Act) and Disaster Management Act which can control misinformation and disinformation. An example of awareness intervention is an initiative named ‘Satyameva Jayate’ launched in Kannur district of Kerala, India which focused on sensitizing children at school to spot misinformation [ 67 ]. As noted earlier, within the research on Misinformation in the political context, there is a lack of research on strategies adopted by the state to counter misinformation. Therefore, building on cases like 'Satyameva Jayate' would further contribute to knowledge in this area.

Technology-based strategies adopted by social media to control the spread of misinformation emphasize the corrective algorithms, keywords and hashtags as a solution [ 32 , 37 , 43 ]. However, these corrective measures have their own limitations. Misinformation corrective algorithms are ineffective if not used immediately after the misinformation has been created. Related hashtags and keywords are used by researchers to find content shared on social media platforms to retrieve data. However, it may not be possible for researchers to cover all the keywords or hashtags employed by users. Further, algorithms may not decipher content shared in regional languages. Another limitation of algorithms employed by platforms is that they recommend and often display content based on user activities and interests which limits the users access to information from multiple perspectives, thus reinforcing their existing belief [ 29 ]. A reparative measure is to display corrective information as 'related stories' for misinformation. However, Facebook’s related stories algorithm only activates when an individual clicks on an outside link, which limits the number of people who will see the corrective information through the algorithm which turns out to be a challenge. Future research could investigate the impact of related stories as a corrective measure by analyzing the relation between misinformation and frequency of related stories posted vis a vis real information.

Our review also found a scarcity of research on the spread of misinformation on certain social media platforms while studies being skewed toward a few others. Of the studies reviewed, 15 articles were concentrated on misinformation spread on Twitter and Facebook. Although, from recent news reports it is evident that largely misinformation and disinformation are spread through popular messaging platforms like the 'WhatsApp', ‘Telegram’, ‘WeChat’, and ‘Line’, research using data from these platforms are, however, scanty. Especially in the Indian context, the magnitude of problems arising from misinformation through WhatsApp are overwhelming [ 68 ]. To address the lacunae of research on messaging platforms, we suggest future researchers to concentrate on investigating the patterns of misinformation spreading on platforms like WhatsApp. Moreover, message diffusion patterns are unique to each social media platform; therefore, it is useful to study the misinformation diffusion patterns on different social media platforms. Future studies could also address the differential roles, patterns and intensity of the spread of misinformation on various messaging and photo/ video-sharing social networking services.

Evident from our review, most research on misinformation is based on Euro-American context and the dominant models proposed for controlling misinformation may have limited applicability to other regions. Moreover, the popularity of social media platforms and usage patterns are diverse across the globe consequent to cultural differences and political regimes of the region, therefore necessitating researchers of social media to take cognizance of empirical experiences of ' left-over' regions.

To understand the spread of misinformation on social media platforms, we conducted a systematic literature review in three important domains where misinformation is rampant: disaster, health, and politics. We reviewed 28 articles relevant to the themes chosen for the study. This is one of the earliest reviews focusing on social media misinformation research, especially based on three sensitive domains. We have discussed how misinformation spreads in the three sectors, the methodologies that have been used by researchers, theoretical perspectives, Antecedents-Misinformation-Outcomes (AMIO) framework for understanding key concepts and their inter-relationships, and strategies to control the spread of misinformation.

Our review also identified major gaps in IS research on misinformation in social media. This includes the need for methodological innovations in addition to experimental methods which have been widely used. This study has some limitations that we acknowledge. We might not have identified all relevant papers on spread of misinformation on social media from existing literature as some authors might have used different keywords and also due to our strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. There might also have been relevant publications in languages other than English which were not covered in this review. Our focus on three domains also restricted the number of papers we reviewed.

Author contributions

TMS: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing—Original Draft, SKM: Writing—Review & Editing, Supervision.

This research did not receive any specific Grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Declarations

On behalf of two authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest in this research paper.

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  • Review Article
  • Published: 08 February 2024

Short- and long-term variability of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets

  • Edward Hanna   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8683-182X 1 ,
  • Dániel Topál   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9348-4494 2 , 3 ,
  • Jason E. Box   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0052-8705 4 ,
  • Sammie Buzzard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0722-2549 5 , 6 ,
  • Frazer D. W. Christie   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7378-4243 7 ,
  • Christine Hvidberg   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9665-1339 8 ,
  • Mathieu Morlighem   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5219-1310 9 ,
  • Laura De Santis   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7752-7754 10 ,
  • Alessandro Silvano   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6441-1496 11 ,
  • Florence Colleoni   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4582-812X 10 ,
  • Ingo Sasgen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8993-0989 12 , 13 ,
  • Alison F. Banwell   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9545-829X 14 ,
  • Michiel R. van den Broeke   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4662-7565 15 ,
  • Robert DeConto 16 ,
  • Jan De Rydt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2978-8706 6 ,
  • Heiko Goelzer   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5878-9599 17 ,
  • Alexandra Gossart 18 ,
  • G. Hilmar Gudmundsson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4236-5369 6 ,
  • Katrin Lindbäck   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5941-6743 19 , 20 ,
  • Bertie Miles   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3388-4688 21 ,
  • Ruth Mottram   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1016-1997 22 ,
  • Frank Pattyn   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4805-5636 23 ,
  • Ronja Reese   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7625-040X 6 ,
  • Eric Rignot   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3366-0481 24 , 25 , 26 ,
  • Aakriti Srivastava   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0007-3759-9087 27 ,
  • Sainan Sun   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1614-2658 6 ,
  • Justin Toller   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0506-0523 28 ,
  • Peter A. Tuckett 29 &
  • Lizz Ultee   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8780-3089 30  

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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  • Climate change
  • Cryospheric science

The variability of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets occurs on various timescales and is important for projections of sea level rise; however, there are substantial uncertainties concerning future ice-sheet mass changes. In this Review, we explore the degree to which short-term fluctuations and extreme glaciological events reflect the ice sheets’ long-term evolution and response to ongoing climate change. Short-term (decadal or shorter) variations in atmospheric or oceanic conditions can trigger amplifying feedbacks that increase the sensitivity of ice sheets to climate change. For example, variability in ocean-induced and atmosphere-induced melting can trigger ice thinning, retreat and/or collapse of ice shelves, grounding-line retreat, and ice flow acceleration. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is especially prone to increased melting and ice sheet collapse from warm ocean currents, which could be accentuated with increased climate variability. In Greenland both high and low melt anomalies have been observed since 2012, highlighting the influence of increased interannual climate variability on extreme glaciological events and ice sheet evolution. Failing to adequately account for such variability can result in biased projections of multi-decadal ice mass loss. Therefore, future research should aim to improve climate and ocean observations and models, and develop sophisticated ice sheet models that are directly constrained by observational records and can capture ice dynamical changes across various timescales.

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The authors are grateful to the World Climate Research Programme’s Climate & Cryosphere core project, the International Arctic Science Committee and SCAR for co-sponsoring an ISMASS workshop that led to this collaboration. E.H. and A. Silvano acknowledge funding from NERC (NE/W005875/1, NE/Y000129/1 and NE/V014285/1). F.D.W.C. acknowledges funding from the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. R.R. was supported by the TiPACCs project, which receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 820575. J.D.R. was supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (grant agreement no MR/W011816/1). H.G. received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement number 869304, PROTECT and the Research Council of Norway under projects 295046 and 324639. L.D.S. acknowledges funding from the PNRA19_00022 project. F.C. acknowledges funding from the PNRA18_00002 project and from the SCAR INSTANT Programme. R.M. received funding from the EU’s Horizon Europe Programme under grant agreement number 101060452, OCEAN:ICE. I.S. acknowledges funding by the Helmholtz Climate Initiative REKLIM (Regional Climate Change), a joint research project of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (HGF). A.G. acknowledges financial support from the New Zealand Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment (grant number ANTA1801; Antarctic Science Platform). The authors thank S. Hanna for the help with figure preparation.

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Examining the short and long-term impacts of child sexual abuse: a review study

  • Review Paper
  • Open access
  • Published: 15 February 2024
  • Volume 4 , article number  56 , ( 2024 )

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  • Sana Ali   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3474-000X 1 , 2 ,
  • Saadia Anwar Pasha   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6416-7358 3 ,
  • Ann Cox   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8399-8050 4 &
  • Enaam Youssef 5  

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Child sexual abuse is a growing problem, representing an egregious abuse of power, trust, and authority with far-reaching implications for the victims. This review study highlights the intricate psychological impacts of child sexual abuse, addressing both short and long-term consequences. Existing literature highlights the deep impacts on the victims’ psychological health and well-being, necessitating an in-depth examination of the subject. Drawing from a sample of n = 19 research articles selected through stringent inclusion and exclusion criteria and the PRISMA approach, this study synthesizes results from publications spanning 2010 to 2022. The review reveals various detrimental impacts on the victims’ psychological well-being, including short-term consequences, i.e., isolation, bullying, stress, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Long-term effects encompass PTSD in later life, disrupted intimate relationships, social and emotional health concerns, revictimization, and more. In conclusion, the study emphasizes the lack of a definitive number of impacts, highlighting the need to discuss and raise awareness about child sexual abuse. This increased awareness is important for parents, guardians, and responsible authorities to effectively counteract these crimes against children. Also, providing emotional support to victims is important to mitigate the long-term impacts. The researchers offer implications and discuss limitations, providing an extensive overview and foundation for future research and interventions.

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Introduction

Child sexual abuse is prevalent across class, race, and ethnicity, with both short-term and long-term impacts. It mainly involves an interaction between the abuser and the child, in which the child is the focus of the sexual stimulation of an observer or the offender (Wagenmans et al. 2018 ). Child sexual abuse is anticipated as silencing the minor, and consequently, reporting such incidents is much less. Even without knowing the full ratio of the relevant incidents, experts agree that 500,000 children face sexual abuse yearly (YWCA.org 2017 ). This sexual offence against children has always been an existing phenomenon in all societies and historical eras. For instance, ancient civilizations openly adopted child sexual abuse as a normal, cultural, and social practice aimed at the learning and development of children (Ali 2019 ). Despite the perceptions about child sexual abuse historically varied, we found varying perceptions ranging from acceptance (justifiable) to rejection (children’s rights violation) (DiLillo et al. 2014 ). Child sexual abuse is not limited only to penetration; instead, showing a child pornographic photos, voyeurism, touching a child’s genitals, and even making the child touch or see the perpetrator’s private body parts is also considered sexual abuse (National Sexual Violence Resource Center 2011 ). It is also notable that both boys and girls are strongly susceptible to sexual abuse. However, girls are more vulnerable as they confront sexual abuse three times more than boys, while boys are more likely to be severely injured or die after sexual molestation (National Sexual Violence Resource Center 2011 ). A report by the World Health Organization in 2006 revealed that more than 20% of women and 8% of men in 39 countries reported that they had faced sexual abuse during childhood.

Similarly, data from 2012 to 2013 shows that 2% of boys and 4% of girls experience some sexual abuse every year (Chan et al. 2013 ). Another report (UNICEF 2020a ) revealed that more than 120 million individuals worldwide face forced sexual acts during their childhood. Most are females (89%), and 11% are males. Globally, this statistic is much higher as every one out of four girls and one in every six boys during the early years of their lives (YWCA.org 2017 ).

Similarly, sexual abuse of children is possible in almost every social setting and location, i.e., schools, roads, justice institutions, and homes. Also, it is prevalent equally among all socio-economic classes and age groups; children facing sexual abuse sometimes cannot realize their molestation (Selengia et al. 2020 ). Around 92.0 of the reported incidents were linked by acquittances (closed relatives), indicating the prevalence of incestuous abuse (Ali et al. 2021 ). Notably, there are three dynamic factors behind child sexual abuse, i.e., psychological, economic, and social. For instance, social factors involve one’s personal experience of sexual exploitation during childhood (Middleton et al. 2017 ). Economic factors involve poverty. For example, parents may ask their girl child to look for a capable man to take care of her primary needs, which may further lead to engaging in sexual activities in return for monetary support (Simuforosa 2015 , p. 1792).

On the other hand, psychological factors are mainly defined as sexual interest in children due to a mental disorder (Tenbergen et al. 2015 ). However, the economic factors responsible for perpetuating child sexual abuse mainly involve forcibly engaging children in sexual acts, selling or buying children pornography, and all the other relevant factors that lead to the economic benefits for the perpetrators (Ali 2019 ). Notably, the impacts of child sexual use are detrimental from different aspects. For instance, these impacts are immediate yet prolonged, indicating their severity during adulthood. According to (Downing et al. 2021 ), stress-induced variations in the pro-inflammatory substances, i.e., alterations in gene expression and cortisol, mediate these detrimental impacts.

Additionally, risky sexual behaviours against children and the opposite gender are further attributed to the impacts of child sexual abuse (Fisher et al. 2017 , p. 11). Child sexual abuse poses an influential societal challenge, demanding careful examination to understand its complexities fully.

Aim and purpose

This research aims to scrutinize the role of Child Sexual Abuse as a risk factor for causing several psychological concerns among the victims. The researcher has reviewed some studies on Child Sexual Abuse and its impacts. Drawing on the aims of this article, the study aims to examine (1) the short-term psychological impacts of Child Sexual Abuse and (2) the long-term psychological impacts of Child Sexual Abuse according to studies conducted during the past twelve years (2010–2022). The overarching goal is to provide a comprehensive synthesis of existing literature, shedding light on the multifaceted consequences of child sexual abuse over both short and long-term durations. By systematically analyzing and assessing a selected set of articles, this study seeks to contribute to the understanding of prevalent themes, methodologies, and gaps in the existing literature surrounding the psychological impacts of child sexual abuse. The significance of this work extends to informing future research, interventions, and policymaking related to child protection and well-being. Finally, the aim is to facilitate the development of targeted and effective strategies for preventing, intervening, and supporting individuals affected by children.

In response to the urgent need for a comprehensive understanding, this review study uses the PRISMA approach to navigate existing literature. Addressing the CSA in current knowledge, we highlight the major difficulties associated with unravelling the complexities of child sexual abuse. This review not only synthesizes an extensive body of research but also discusses their findings and insights to overcome the inherent challenges in comprehending the short and long-term impacts of child sexual abuse. Our study seeks to make a distinctive contribution by explaining the intercity of this fragile subject matter, thus laying the groundwork for more effective interventions and support systems. It addresses the following research questions based on the aims and purposes of current research.

RQ1. What constitutes Child Sexual Abuse, and how can it be accurately defined within the current literature?

RQ2. How does Child Sexual Abuse affect the mental health and overall well-being of individuals, considering both short-term and long-term impacts?

This study is based on the systematic literature review approach. The review-based studies are a significant part of the existing literature as they closely witness the ongoing trends and complexities in the field under study (Ali and Pasha 2022 ). Besides, the relevant studies also highlight the major findings to further the gap and conduct an in-depth analysis of the other aspects of the same concern.

Assumptions and justifications

In the context of this systematic literature review, certain assumptions were made to facilitate the synthesis and analysis of the selected studies. These assumptions are integral to the nature of the review process. First, it was deemed that the definitions of key terms, i.e., “child sexual abuse” and “psychological impacts,” were relatively consistent across the selected studies. This assumption is grounded in the anticipation that researchers within the field comply with widely accepted definitions and classifications. While variations in terminologies exist, a comprehensive screening process and compliance with inclusion criteria mitigated possible discrepancies. The study focused on articles with clear and relevant definitions, assuring homogeneity in the selected literature.

Further, the decision to include articles published from 2010 onwards was based on the assumption that recent research mirrors current trends and developments in comprehending the psychological impacts of child sexual abuse. The rationale is rooted in the dynamic nature of research, focusing on current perspectives. This assumption allows for analyzing the most recent insights into the subject matter and recognizing the evolving nature of societal attitudes and academic discourse.

Evaluation of assumptions

While these assumptions were important for the systematic review process, it is important to acknowledge their probable impact on the results. A few considerations emphasize how these assumptions may affect the outcomes. For example, despite efforts to ensure consistency, variations in definitions across studies may introduce complexities in interpreting psychological impacts. This could influence the synthesis of results, and readers should be aware of the potential heterogeneity in conceptualizing key terms. Besides, the focus on recent publications assumes that newer research accurately represents the current landscape. However, this may bias contemporary perspectives, potentially bypassing practical insights from earlier studies.

Thus, considering the problem’s complexity and continuous research, the researcher selected three specialized platforms: PubMed, Science Direct, and APA PsycNet. However, the selection criteria were not restricted to any age, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and language. The keywords for the search were “impacts of child sexual abuse, child sexual abuse, psychological effects of child sexual abuse, short-term effects of child sexual abuse, and long-term effects of child sexual abuse. Later the researcher tabulated the data using Microsoft Excel, which further helped calculate the included articles’ percentages and frequencies. The researcher used the PRISMA method for systematic review, as suggested by (Page and McKenzie 2021 ). Table  1 summarizes the inclusion and exclusion criteria used in the current study:

Based on the PRISMA method of screening, evaluation and Selection, the researchers gathered a total of 113 records from the selected database. After removing the duplicates, 106 total articles were further screened for full-text availability (93). Finally, the researchers selected n  = 19 articles adhering to the selection criteria (See Fig.  1 ).

figure 1

PRISMA flow chart for the articles selection process

Table  2 summarizes the frequencies and percentages of the literature according to their database. It is observable that most of the articles were from PubMed (n = 11 or 57.8). APA PsyNet provided n = 7 or 36.8% articles, while n  = 1 (5.2%) article was obtained from Science Direct.

Table  3 summarizes the frequencies and percentages of the selected literature according to their publication years. As visible, most of the studies ( n  = 12, 63.1%) were published from 2015 to 2020, indicating that these years focused mainly on research scholars in psychology, communication, sociology, criminology, and other fields. These results also reflect the prevalence of the relevant concern demanding a strong consideration towards children’s rights and health protection (Ali and Pasha 2022 ). Followed by 04 or 21.0% of studies published between 2010–2015, n  = 03 or 1.7% of studies published until the end of November 2022.

Concerning the frequencies and percentages of the cited literature according to their designs, most studies (09 or 47.3%) were based on a review approach. Followed by experimental design ( n  = 06 or 31.5%), 03 or 15.7% of studies were based on the perspective method. Finally, online n  = 1 (5.2%) of the study was based on the case study method, and the same number of studies ( n  = 1, 5.2%) was categorized as “other” (See Table  4 ). Additionally, n  = 11 or 7.8% of studies were based on a qualitative approach, n = 11 or 57.8% were based on the quantitative approach, and only one study was based on the mixed method approach (See Table  5 ).

The researchers calculated the frequencies and percentages of the cited literature according to the data-gathering approaches used by the relevant researchers (See Table  3 ). Most studies ( n  = 13, 68.4%) were based on the survey method. Besides, the interview approach was preferred in 04% of studies. While n  = 1 (5.2%) study was based on the literature review approach, and the same number of literature ( n  = 1, 5.2%) was categorized as “other”.

Validation of selected methodology

The methodology used in this systematic literature review underwent a thorough validation process to ensure its reliability and comprehensiveness. Key elements of the validation process are.

Adherence to PRISMA Guidelines: The systematic review methodology rigorously adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, as Page and McKenzie ( 2021 ) recommended. PRISMA guidelines are widely recognized and accepted standards for conducting systematic reviews, assuring a systematic and transparent approach to literature synthesis.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria: Establishing clear and strict inclusion and exclusion criteria contributed to the robustness of the methodology. These criteria were designed to select studies that specifically addressed the psychological impacts of child sexual abuse, enhancing the relevance and reliability of the synthesized literature.

Search Strategy: The search strategy employed in selecting articles was exhaustive, using three specialized platforms—PubMed, Science Direct, and APA PsycNet. The chosen keywords were carefully selected to encompass diverse dimensions of child sexual abuse and its psychological impacts, minimizing the risk of overlooking pertinent studies.

Data Tabulation and Analysis: Using Microsoft Excel for data tabulation provided a structured and organized approach to handling the extensive information extracted from the selected articles. This facilitated a systematic calculation of frequencies and percentages, assuring accuracy and consistency in reporting.

PRISMA Flow Chart: A PRISMA flow chart (Fig.  1 ) visually represents the systematic article selection, screening, and inclusion process. This chart improves transparency and serves as a visual validation of the methodological stringency applied in the study.

While this systematic review does not involve the same type of validation as experimental or modelling studies, the validation lies in compliance with established guidelines, rigorous criteria for article selection, and transparent reporting of the review process. These elements collectively contribute to the robustness and credibility of the methodology used in this study.

Review of literature

Defining child sexual abuse.

According to (Pulverman et al. 2018 ), the definition of child sexual abuse has been a major concern for many researchers since the 1970s. The prevalent cases and recent concerns indicate that providing and establishing the definition of child sexual abuse is urgent and needs strong consideration. Notably, it is important to keep the complexity and sensitivity of the relevant issue under consideration when providing a potential definition of child sexual abuse (Pulverman et al. 2018 ) theoretically defined child sexual abuse as the unconscionability of the acts, which further indicates four types of activities such as the relationship of power between an adult and child, the child in the lower position facing inequality, the child’s susceptibility is exploited based on their detriment, and truancy of true consent (Table 6 ).

Defining sexual abuse can vary on a different basis. For instance, (Vaillancourt-Morel et al. 2016 ) argue that child sexual abuse mainly relies on the legal definition. Several self-reported cases of child sexual abuse remained affirmed, leading to further legal actions, yet some cases indicate doubtful accusations. As in the empirical study (Vaillancourt-Morel et al. 2016 ), results indicated 21.3% sexual abuse among females and 19.6% among males. At the same time, 7.1% of females and 3.8% remained consistent with self-defined child sexual abuse. However, (Ma 2018 ) stated that the relevant definition could vary according to the prevalence estimation. Besides, this definition is based on five criteria, including the age of the childhood, the age of the perpetrator or the age difference between the victim and the perpetrator, the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator, the type of sexual acts performed by the perpetrator, and the extension of the coercion. According to (Pulverman et al. 2018 ), child sexual abuse can be defined as unwanted sexual activities between an adult and a child, including vaginal, oral, and anal penetration. Besides, online child sexual abuse, including online sex, child pornography, and others, is also considered a vital type of child sexual abuse.

Impacts of child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse is strongly detrimental to children’s physical and psychological health. In this regard, researchers and medical experts claim physical consequences as serious as brain damage and immediate death. Minor injuries are also found in some cases. However, death is the most common physical outcome of child sexual abuse (Habes et al. 2022 ). As noted by (Beltran 2010 ), no single impact patterns exist. Sometimes, a victim does not show any prominent impacts that may impede the development of a psychological syndrome that adversely affects a child’s social, emotional and cognitive abilities. Some researchers claim that only 20–30% of children remain emotionally and physically stable after sexual molestation. However, although they remain normal, internally, they develop latent effects of sexual abuse. The short-term and immediate psychological impacts of sexual abuse may involve painful emotions, Post-traumatic stress disorder, cognitive distortions, and disturbed mood. These victims respond to sexual abuse in diverse ways that can be changed over time. However, the psychological harm is still severe and can result in even adverse consequences. During sexual abuse, victims can feel fear, anxiety, self-blame, guilt, confusion, and anger. They feel self-conscious and humiliated, unable to talk about what happened, which can result in stress and frustration (Pulverman et al. 2018 ). Table  1 below provides a summary of studies witnessing the physical and psychological consequences of child sexual abuse (Table 7 ).

(Batool and Abtahi 2017 ) named short-term effects “initial effects”, as these reactions mainly occur during the first two years of abuse. Previous studies revealed that 66.0% of children were emotionally disturbed due to sexual abuse, 5.2% were mild to moderately disturbed, and 24.0% remained stable after the sexual abuse. Similarly, a study conducted by (Fontes et al. 2017 ) also witnessed the short-term impacts of sexual abuse on the mental health of the victims. Results gathered by using the Propensity Score Matching technique revealed that 13.3% of sexually abused children reported a greater feeling of loneliness, 7.5% were having difficulty in making friends, and 9.5% reported insomnia. Despite these effects differing among male and female children, both were equally confronting to the relevant mental disturbances.

Further, regarding the long-term effects of child sexual abuse, (Petersen et al. 2014 ) stated that it results in both short and long-term effects. A survivor may feel peer rejection, confusion, lack of self-confidence, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and aggression. Similarly, in the later years, the survivor may also develop other extreme psychiatric disorders such as depression, low economic productivity, drug addiction and even severe medical illness. According to (Hodder and Gow 2012 ), long-term child sexual abuse can also result in substance abuse, long-term depression, negative attributions, and even eating disorders. Most recently, practitioners also found even more chronic mental disorders such as delusions, schizophrenia, and personality disorders. However, children who have experienced abuse involving penetration are more likely to develop these chronic psychotic and schizophrenic disorders. Likewise, sexually abused children also have low self-esteem and overly sexualized behaviour, which, in many cases, results in teen pregnancy and motherhood and even an increased vulnerability to another victimization (Townsend 2013 ). Besides, socially isolated children with a disability or emotional disorder are comparatively more vulnerable to victimization. Once the abuse has happened, they also face threats to end the relationship if they refuse to perform sex or threats to publicly share their sexual images (UNICEF 2020b ) (Table 8 ).

Wagenmans et al. ( 2018 ) highlighted the occurrence of prolonged and severe psychological disorders among individuals who previously experienced child sexual abuse. As noted, the prolonged effects are more common when there is a repetitive and interpersonal nature of abuse, mostly leading to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in later years. Those with a history of Child Sexual Abuse risk developing issues in interpersonal relationships, emotional regulation, and self-concept that result in “Complex PTSD” (p. 2). As (Gupta and Garg 2020 ) noted, child sexual abuse indicates an increased self-harming behaviour, fear, depression, impaired brain development, and others that are criteria for developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Notably, this sexual abuse is not limited to physical and sexual harm; it also involves emotional abuse that further indicates the severity of the relevant issue today. It is also worth mentioning that most victims report sexual abuse in their later life. These victims also indicate their revictimization as one of the most consistent outcomes of child sexual abuse (Papalia et al. 2021 ). The term revictimization is also defined as any further victimization even during childhood, adolescence, or adulthood after the first incident of sexual abuse during childhood (P.1). However, there can be different factors, including sex, mental health issues, age at initial abuse, and others as different determinants of revictimization (Papalia et al. 2021 ). (MacIntosh and Ménard 2021 ) synthesized the status of research witnessing the long-term impacts of child sexual abuse over the past thirty years. As noted, different researchers have witnessed different impacts. Disturbed academic functioning, substance abuse and alcoholism in later years, revictimization and developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Besides, sexual disorders, sex-related cognitions, disturbed intimate relationships, and emotional aspects of sexuality remain highlighted, witnessed, and still need much more consideration. Finally, the study by (Schreier et al. 2017 ) highlighted another important dimension regarding the impacts of child sexual abuse, as their focus was on the victims’ siblings as an important factor to determine in post-abuse scenarios. As noted, siblings can confront several emotional responses after disclosing the child’s sexual abuse. Siblings’ reactions are important as negative behaviour can increase the post-abuse stress among the victim and the family. Thus, it is concluded that the siblings should also be provided clinical services to reduce the negative impacts of child sexual abuse. Siblings also indicate symptoms of distress on an average level that needs strong consideration.

The gathered evidence unequivocally highlights the pervasive and profound negative impacts of child sexual abuse on the psychological health, cognitive development, and overall well-being of victims. The complex dynamics of the relationship between the abuser and the child, initially built on trust and affection, morph into a distressing paradigm of power, domination, victimization, and, in some examples, revictimization. The susceptibility of children in such situations places their psychological health at considerable risk, necessitating urgent and effective preventive measures to protect their well-being. This study serves to highlight the enduring and detrimental repercussions of child sexual abuse that can persist throughout a child’s life. The complexities of the psychological toll highlight the need for targeted interventions and support mechanisms. Our findings indicate that discussions and heightened awareness surrounding child sexual abuse are imperative. It is not merely a matter of quantifying impacts but a call to action to proactively empower parents, guardians, and responsible authorities to counteract these blatant crimes against children. Thus, our study affirms the critical importance of providing emotional support to victims, recognizing it as an integral component in mitigating the long-term impacts of child sexual abuse. By shedding light on the deep consequences and supporting awareness, we aim to contribute to the collective efforts toward a safer environment for children, free from the effects of sexual abuse.

Implications

Incidents of child sexual abuse are prevalent, especially since access to vulnerable children is even more feasible due to social media and other digital platforms (Ali et al. 2021 ). Consequently, children are at increased risk of maltreatment, particularly sexual abuse. Consequently, this research has some implications for the service and police departments, parents, and mental healthcare practitioners across the globe.

Families should receive prevention support and guidance through proper risk assessment and multi-level parent education (Tener et al. 2020 ). Parents informing the children about the protection measures can also help them prevent any detrimental incident that may further nullify the impacts of sexual abuse.

Providing mental healthcare services to the victims, their families, and their siblings, as also emphasized by (Schreier et al. 2017 ), also ensures the children’s mental well-being and development, especially among those who have been through any abusive exposure.

Besides psychological impacts, there are other detrimental impacts that child faces after sexual abuse that necessitate the provision of adequate healthcare services. These healthcare services aim to ensure the different consequences of abuse and that the victim may overcome the incident (Rahnavardi et al. 2022 ).

Medical healthcare providers, including staff, should also support and guide the victim and their families. Although exposure to a CSA victim can be traumatizing for healthcare practitioners, their behaviour and support patterns can help the victims cope with the challenges, especially with the psychological impacts (Pérez-Fuentes et al. 2013 ).

A victim can also face other consequences that may further worsen the impact of sexual abuse, including bullying. Schools and teachers can also effectively nullify these impacts by supporting and scrutinizing the victims. The focus should be on avoiding any further outcomes on their mental health (Sawyerr and Bagley 2017 ).

Implementing laws and active consideration towards welfare programs and training sessions for children, parents, and teachers as caregivers can also mitigate the impacts of child sexual abuse (Batool and Abtahi 2017 ).

Limitations and recommendations

Although this study synthesized the findings of recent literature witnessing both short-term and long-term impacts of child sexual abuse, it also contains some primary limitations. First, this study does not involve human subjects or clinical trials that may witness the impacts under study in a particular setting. Second, the Selection of the cited articles was strict and based on only three databases, limiting its scope. Third, the research does not provide any country-specific evidence. Instead, the cited literature is scattered and based on studies from around the world. Finally, although the study empirically witnesses the impacts of child sexual abuse, there are many regions where empirical research on child sexual abuse, its impacts, and causes are understudied. Consequently, this study emphasizes conducting more research on the impacts of child sexual abuse, its prevalence, and causal factors that may further provide strong insights regarding the relevant issue and help propose implications and nullify its impacts.

Data availability

No data is associated with this research project.

Code availability

No codes are available for this study.

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S.A. conceived the first draft of the manuscript. Dr. S.A.P. gathered data and conducted the analysis. Dr. A.C. revised the manuscript and formatted the language and references. Dr. E.Y. contributed in the final revisions and also contributed to restructuring the questions and validation of selected methodology.

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Ali, S., Pasha, S., Cox, A. et al. Examining the short and long-term impacts of child sexual abuse: a review study. SN Soc Sci 4 , 56 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-024-00852-6

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