To stay up-to-date in your field of research or study, you should read research papers. However, reading a research paper is not like reading a newspaper. Because a paper has a formal structure that consists of several sections. Authors of research papers know the structure quite well. It is also essential for readers to be familiar with the main sections of a research paper. This helps readers to quickly find the information they are looking for in a research paper. Moreover, it helps them comprehend new ideas and methods of a paper better. Aside from gaining new knowledge, reading research papers help you find out what was done in the past to solve a particular problem. Therefore, you are not going to reinvent the wheel and probably implement a method or algorithm that is proposed in a paper.
In this post, I explain the components of each section in a research article. Also, examples from a real and open-access research paper in machine learning are provided to help you understand the components of each section.