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August 17, 2016
Reading Academic Papers
estimated reading time: 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Reading an academic paper is unlike reading a novel or even a popular non-fiction book. Academic papers are intended to be read differently, but most PhD programs do not provide formal training on how to read them. The goal of this article is to provide a short introduction on how to read academic papers and references for additional advice.1
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Start with the Introduction and Conclusion. Your goal here should be to identify the problem addressed in the paper, the approach taken by the authors, and a basic understanding of their results.
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Scan the rest of the paper to determine its purpose, structure, and direction. Once you know the general point (purpose), the outline (structure), and the author’s approach (direction), then all the details are much easier to place in the correct context. Scanning a paper in this way reduces the chances that you’ll run into an idea that seems confusing on your first detailed reading of the paper. You may realize it is explained in more detail later in the paper.
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Do not read every single word in the paper in order. There are bound to be words, concepts, math, or other details that could trip you up or require extensive thought. If you take the time to re-read a paragraph or re-examine an equation until you completely understand it, you could end up wasting quite a bit of time. Often if you simply plow past the part you don’t understand, you will find it clarified in a later section. Simply note the confusing part of the paper and come back to it if the rest of the paper doesn’t make it clear.
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After you read the paper, immediately attempt to identify its main point, strengths, and weaknesses. Ideally, you should try to write a short one paragraph summary; a list of strengths or things you liked in the paper; and a list of weaknesses, limitations, or things you didn’t like in the paper. This could be a part of your annotated bibliography. If you start pondering the implications of this work before clearly identifying these elements of the paper as the authors presented them, then you will likely have trouble separating your opinions about the paper from the basic elements of the paper.
Alright, those are the basics. There are, of course, other things to know about how academic papers are structured and how they can be read efficiently, but I consider these elements to be the bare essentials. Try reading a few papers keeping just these tips in mind. Once you have, you can consult with some of the following resources to identify some additional improvements.
- Keshav’s How to Read a Paper (PDF)
- Some Tips on Reading Research Papers
- Quick Tutorial on Reading Scientific Papers
- Quora Question: How do I need to read a research paper?
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Much of this article comes from my earlier post on the same subject. ↩
