What do you make of scientific papers?
First year students may yet to have read one in depth but second and third years should be getting to grips with what is the primary mode of communication of scientific research.
They can seem daunting, especially at first. For a start there are thousands of journals out there and it can be difficult to get a measure of the differences between them. Which is better — Nature or Science? The EMBO Journal or the Journal of Biological Chemistry? How do you find out?
As an undergraduate student, you may feel that you are in no position to criticise the contents of a paper that has obviously been written by an ‘expert’.