Many UW Undergraduate students find skimming a great way to get an understanding of what an article is about quickly by being able to identify different keywords and parts of an article.

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Recall from the Anatomy of an Academic Article that many academic and research texts have a basic structure.

Read the abstract, introduction and conclusion. Often this will be sufficient for a brief understanding of the main purpose.
Skim the middle of the text and look for a statement of methodology, and any visuals presented. What are the method(s) for collecting evidence?
Go back and read the entire text quickly, skipping equations, figures and tables.

Discipline-specific vocabulary: When is it worth it to look it up?

Is the word essential for your understanding of context and main argument?
Is this word appearing multiple times in the text? Where does it appear?

If it’s present in the abstract or introduction, it’s likely worth looking up.
If it’s present in the main body of the text only, and you can understand the main argument without knowing the word, it’s likely only supporting language.

Adapted from Organizations & Markets

Check your knowledge!

Skimming is a great way to quickly get an idea of what an article is about, but I will eventually want to read most, if not the entire, article.

True

Skimming helps you get a basic understanding when looking for articles, but you should still read the entire article when using it as an academic source.

False

Skimming helps you get a basic initial understanding when looking for articles, but you should still read the entire article when using it as a source.