<![CDATA[University students are routinely expected to evaluate scientific articles, yet academic reading is often assigned without explicit instruction in how to identify claims, appraise methods, verify evidence, or monitor comprehension. This article critically integrates research on metacognition, academic literacies, critical reading, and strategy instruction to answer two questions: which processes distinguish evaluative reading from surface reading, and how can those processes be translated into an implementable higher-education protocol? A concept-centred integrative review was conducted using peer-reviewed empirical, review, and theoretical sources identified through publisher platforms, ERIC, and citation chaining. Sources were retained when they addressed academic or critical reading, metacognitive regulation, disciplinary literacy, source evaluation, or embedded literacy instruction. The synthesis compared constructs, instructional mechanisms, reported outcomes, and implementation conditions rather than pooling heterogeneous effects. Five recurring functions emerged: framing a reading purpose, mapping the article's argument and research design, interrogating assumptions, verifying the relationship between claims and evidence, and synthesizing a defensible judgment. These functions were consolidated into the FRAME-V protocol, an iterative heuristic for reading scientific articles. The review indicates that named routines such as SQ3R, PQ4R, questioning, annotation, collaborative reading, and digital scaffolds are useful only when they activate monitoring, evaluation, and evidence integration; procedural completion alone does not guarantee critical reading. The article contributes an aligned set of learning activities and assessment criteria for lecturers and student-support units. Because the review is integrative rather than exhaustive and the protocol has not yet been experimentally validated, the framework should be treated as a theory-informed design proposition for subsequent classroom testing.]]>
