reading techniques for academic papers

Summary from online readings. We should adopt it to our own reading strategy.

 

[comment]: this paper discussed about reading skills by taking a top journal financial paper as an illustration. So for math or CS paper, it should have some minor changes based on the paper. But the main idea should be the same: try to get the major idea of the paper and make a decision wheather it worth to read through word by word.

 

Skim the paper you are reading:

. Skim the title and abstract, recap what they are trying to say.

. skim the first paragraph and last paragrah fully in the section of Introduction , and the first sentence of the each paragrah. (When you go to conclusion sectoin in the end, you need also do like this. )

. skim the first sentence of each paragraph.

. if have figures or tables , just briefly have a look at it. And guess once. Most of time, you cannot get the real meaning. You could come back late.

. After you do the same for conclusion. Try to think about what are the major content and structure of the paper.

. Go back to each figure, read the paragraphs discussed about the figure and try to get the meaning of it.

. In the end, decide wheather you want to read it fully or just several section or even subsections that you are interested in.

 

Some keypoints:

1. Academic papers are not written for reading through the beginning to the end.

2. Reading is a techique, which deserves enough practice like athletes. Keeping practice and don't get frustrated even you cannot understand the paper.

3. Many top journal papers is not supposed to easy understand by just one time. You need to read it several times if you really want to understand it.