How to read a paper?

How to read a paper

The three-pass approach introduction

※ introduction: 

The first pass - general idea about the paper

The second pass - let you grasp the paper's content, but not its details

The third pass - helps you understand the paper in depth

(1) The first pass : quick scan to get a bird's-eye view of the paper. 

1. carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction
2. Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else
3. Glance at the mathematical content (if any) to determine the underlying theoretical foundations
4. Read the conclusions
5. Glance over the references, mentally ticking off the ones you've already read

At the end of the first pass, you should be able to answer the five Cs: 

• Category: What type of paper is this? A measurement paper or An analysis of an existing system? A description of a research prototype? 
• Context: Which other papers is it related to? Which theoretical bases were used to analyze the problem? 
• Correctness: Do the assumptions appear to be valid? 
• Contributions: What are the paper’s main contributions? 
• Clarity: Is the paper well written?

Incidentally, when you write a paper, you can expect most reviewers (and readers) to make only one pass over it. Take care to choose coherent section and sub-section titles and to write concise and comprehensive abstracts. If a reviewer cannot understand the gist after one pass, the paper will likely be rejected; if a reader cannot understand the highlights of the paper after five minutes, the paper will likely never be read. For these reasons, a ‘graphical abstract’ that summarizes a paper with a single well-chosen figure is an excellent idea and can be increasingly found in scientific journals.

(2) The second pass :  read the paper with greater care. noting down terms you didn't understand, or questions you may want to ask the author. 

1. Look carefully at the figures, diagrams and other illustrations in the paper. Pay special attention to graphs. Are the axes properly labeled? Are results shown with error bars, so that conclusions are statistically significant? Common mistakes like these will separate rushed, shoddy work from the truly excellent. 

2. Remember to mark relevant unread references for further reading (this is a good way to learn more about the background of the paper). 

Sometimes you won’t understand a paper even at the end of the second pass. This may be because the subject matter is new to you, with unfamiliar terminology and acronyms. Or the authors may use a proof or experimental technique that you don’t understand, so that the bulk of the paper is incomprehensible. The paper may be poorly written with unsubstantiated assertions and numerous forward references. Or it could just be that it’s late at night and you’re tired. You can now choose to: 

(a) set the paper aside, hoping you don’t need to understand the material to be successful in your career, 

(b) return to the paper later, perhaps after reading background material

(c) persevere and go on to the third pass. 

(3) The third pass :  attempt to virtually re-implement the paper 

that is, making the same assumptions as the authors, re-create the work. By comparing this re-creation with the actual paper, you can easily identify not only a paper’s innovations, but also its hidden failings and assumptions.

This comparison of the actual with the virtual lends a sharp insight into the proof and presentation techniques in the paper and you can very likely add this to your repertoire of tools. During this pass, you should also jot down ideas for future work.

** DOING A LITERATURE SURVEY 

First, use an academic search engine such as Google Scholar or CiteSeer and some well-chosen keywords to find three to five recent highly-cited papers in the area. 

in the second step, find shared citations and repeated author names in the bibliography. These are the key papers and researchers in that area. Download the key papers and set them aside. Then go to the websites of the key researchers and see where they’ve published recently. 

The third step is to go to the website for these top conferences and look through their recent proceedings. A quick scan will usually identify recent high-quality related work. These papers, along with the ones you set aside earlier, constitute the first version of your survey. Make two passes through these papers. If they all cite a key paper that you did not find earlier, obtain and read it, iterating as necessary. 

Link to original paper