Academic journals are interesting because they give a glimpse into the secret knowledge of the research institution and can allow access to information before it becomes mainstream. Journals can appear daunting at first sight because their language, structure and style is often not similar to colloquial English. However, learning to read, understand and interpret an academic journal can bring great rewards for those in search of the truth. Just as there are many insightful and informative papers published in the academic literature, there are also many poor quality studies with methodological flaws and bias. Learning to distinguish between these opposites within the academic literature is a great skill to develop if you seek the truth about any subject because it removes the disadvantageous position of having to defer to an expert. With access to the same information, the student can easily become the expert.
Until recently only academics had easy access to journals and their esoteric information, but the microchip has changed all that. The transfer of paper copies to data files meant that it was only a matter of time before that data became available easily and cheaply to more and more people. The advent of the internet has smashed the academic fortress further and forced the dissemination of its knowledge for the perusal of any interested party. There are now a number of quality nutritional journals available online with free content including full text and pdf copies of most of their papers. The two best are the Journal of Nutrition and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, but there are others. Links are provided at the main menu to guide you to the journal homepages, and links on articles take you directly to the paper being discussed. Have fun.
RdB