A research article is the medium through which scholars make public the results of their research. Research articles are published in scholarly journals. There are literally thousands of academic journals in existence. Even a single academic discipline will have dozens of academic journals, in which scholars report the results of original research. For university faculty members, publishing research articles in scholarly journals is necessary for the professor to receive tenure.
Research articles can vary in structure somewhat across academic disciplines, but in general, most articles contain the following components: a title and abstract, an introduction that states the problem or issue being studied, the study methodology, the study's results, discussion of the results and the broader implications, and a references section that lists all works consulted for the article. Where appropriate, research articles contain graphs and tables that report the data used in the author's study.
Once a scholar completes a research study and writes the results as an article, he submits the work to an appropriate academic journal for consideration. The journal's editor, in turn, sends copies of the paper to several experts in the same field---the scholar's peers; hence, the term "peer review." During this stage, the reviewers give their opinions on the quality of the research, its relevance for the academic discipline, and whether the article is appropriate for publication in the journal.
Following peer review, the research article may be returned to the author for revisions, after which the paper can be resubmitted to the journal. Because of peer review, revisions and resubmissions, getting a research article published is a lengthy process. Sometimes a year or more may pass before an article appears in the journal to which it was submitted.
Because scholars continually try to advance the body of knowledge in their fields of expertise, research articles are among the best sources to learn about the latest research in a particular field. This means that the more knowledgeable a reader is of a particular field, the more she will benefit from the article. Research articles are not a good source of introduction to a specific academic field.
Graduate students who are interested in academic careers should participate in developing research articles while in school. Students often have opportunities to assist faculty members with research that leads to research articles. In addition, students may write their own papers for presentation at academic conferences and later submit them to journals for consideration.