Average Time to Read One College Paper

Guide to Reading Bookish Research Papers

Learn to tackle this laborious process with a systematic approach!

My desk full of papers. Slightly shuffled around for dramatic purposes of form.

Working in information science and machine learning is an exciting and challenging field. New techniques and tools are constantly percolating and honestly, information technology can experience overwhelming. Many of these new developments are establish and first revealed in bookish research manufactures. Extracting cognition from these articles is difficult considering the intended audience of these papers tend to be other researchers. Yet in order to stay current reading papers is an essential skill — luckily ane that can be improved with diligence and practice.

In graduate school , you become good (should get good…) at reading papers and ingesting research. Not everyone will get training in this skill, that doesn't mean you shouldn't benefit from the knowledge these papers concord. Public tax coin is how about of this research gets funded anyways! The goal here is to democratize academia, just a scrap, and provide you with a scaffolding to apply when walking through a paper.

The manner I read papers is not significantly unique, but information technology is effective and has served me well. Keep in mind it is non the only way, many techniques exist and as yous read more and more than I am sure you volition find your own unique mode.

This guide is cleaved downward every bit follows:

1. Learning this skill will aid you! I promise
2. And then I hear reading a paper is hard. Why?
3. How are papers typically organized?
4. My "bullet proof" arroyo to reading papers
5. Tools to help you become the job done

Why Acquire to Read Papers?

Reading papers certainly builds grapheme considering Information technology ofttimes takes many hours and at that place is no guarantee you lot walk abroad with the whole story. This is non to disparage y'all, but merely to be open and transparent. Reading papers is difficult, at that place are no ii ways about it. Advances in fields such equally auto learning, deep learning, data scientific discipline, databases, and data engineering oft come up in the class of academic enquiry, whose language is that of bookish papers. Think near some of the techniques you might use: Convolutional Neural Networks, PCA, and AdaBoost (even Deep Boosting!). These all came out of enquiry, and yes they all have papers. Likewise, consider that there are many papers on the application and use of these techniques and when you are trying to solve a specific trouble, these papers can be critical. Beyond staying current with research information technology is also worth traveling to the past and giving older papers a read. You will larn so much. I promise.

Looking at the field of deep learning information technology seems as though a new critical paper is coming out every few days or weeks. The simply way to stay on top of it is to get a hold of the paper and give it a read.

Where the Difficulties Arise…

Hither is a effigy from a 2017 scientific paper¹ by Hubbard and Dunbar, about reading scientific papers. Scientific Paper inception!

Fig 2. Different sections of scientific papers are considered easy to read and important at dissimilar stages of academic careers.

A: The proportion of participants considering a section easy to read (presented equally 'Somewhat easy', 'easy' 'very piece of cake' combined) as a function of career stage. Results of Chi-square tests are indicated on the left hand side. B: The hateful importance rank of sections as a function of career stage. Fault bars are omitted from individual points for clarity, with the sole error bar in gray representing the largest 95% confidence interval for whatever of the data points. Asterisks above data points point meaning differences in response compared with the previous career stage as determined by Mann-Whitney post-hoc tests.

One unsurprising result indicates the further an academic progresses into their career, the easier they observe each section of a paper to read. An interesting point is how the various career stages view the importance of each section. Methods, Results and figures seem to be very of import, ostensibly because as academics they have greater skill in their field, allowing them to exist critical of a newspaper'south methods. It too means they know their field very well, thereofore, the introduction and abstract accept less importance. Early stage PhD students observe the methods, results, and figures adequately difficult to empathise. This makes perfect sense as those are the areas of a paper that crave the about knowledge of a field to become through. Y'all are likely to have a like feel.

What is information technology exactly that makes going through this process so difficult and fourth dimension consuming?

• Authors tend to presume significant groundwork knowledge from readers
• Academic syntax is dense and thus difficult for readers to parse
• Mathematical expressions are typically condensed and equations reordered for concision, often skipping steps in derivations
• Substantial knowledge gaps are filled if a reader has read cited papers (sort of like — y'all demand experience to get a chore, simply need a job to get experience!)
• Not all conclusions fatigued are correct. Small sample size and power, poor study pattern, researcher bias, and selective reporting ensures that you must be a critical reader!

Conspicuously there is a lot to consider when reading a paper. Scared? Fourth dimension to lighten the mood. Here is a hilarious article written on the horrors of reading papers by Dr. Adam Ruben from Science. It shows even scientists can agree that papers are both difficult to read and given how dumbo they are, volition go along you regular.

Call up about this, the more papers yous read, the more you will learn and the faster this procedure of reading becomes. Trends start cropping up into plain view, and you begin to gain insight into the scientific method, sympathise what sure authors and groups are working on, and form an appreciation for the field you are learning about. Over fourth dimension all of this knowledge and skill builds into your power to read papers quicker, more efficiently and with greater success. Learning to read papers is alike to learning to consume. It is messy at commencement, and your palette is not very well adult. But over time your eating experience enhances and you learn more almost what you like and don't like and when a chef'due south repast is proficient and poor.

How Papers are Organized

Good news here. The overwhelming majority of papers follow, more than or less, the same convention of system:

1. Title: Hopefully tricky, possibly sexy! Includes additional info virtually the authors and their institutions
2. Abstract: Loftier level summary
3. Introduction: Groundwork info on the field and related research leading upwards to this paper
4. Methods: Highly detailed section on the study that was conducted, how it was ready up, any instruments used, and finally, the process and workflow
5. Results: Authors talk about the data that was created or collected, it should read as an unbiased account of what occurred
6. Discussions: Here is where authors interpret the results, and convince the readers of their findings and hypothesis
7. References: Whatever other work that was cited in the body of the text volition prove upward here
8. Appendix: More figures, additional treatments on related math, or extra items of interest can find their way in an appendix

Developing a Systematic Approach

When you sit down downwards to read it's of import to have a plan. Simply starting to read from page one to the stop will probably practice you no expert. Beyond retaining limited information, you will exist wearied and take gained very little for the tremendous effort. This is where many people stop.

Do plan to spend anywhere from 3–half-dozen hours to really digest a paper, remember they are very dumbo! Be ready and willing to brand several passes through the paper, each time looking to extract different data and understanding. And please, do yourself a favor and exercise non read the paper front to cease on your showtime pass.

Below are two lists. (i.) the systematic approach I take, more or less, when reading a paper (ii.) a full general listing of questions I try to answer as I go through the newspaper. I typically add more specific questions depending on the paper.

Let's go started!

1. Try to notice a quiet place for a few hours and grab your favorite drink (could be coffee, tea, or anything really). Present I often notice myself working in splendid coffee shops².
2. Start past reading the title and abstract. Aiming to gain a high level overview of the paper. What are the main goal(southward) of the author(s) and the loftier level results. The abstract typically provides some clues into the purpose of the paper. Call back of the abstract equally advertisement.
3. Spend about 15 minutes skimming the newspaper. Take a quick look at the figures and note whatsoever keywords to look out for when reading the text. Try to get a sense for the layout of the paper and where things are located. Yous will be referencing dorsum and forth between the different sections and pages subsequently on, it helps knowing where stuff is located. Endeavor not to spend time taking any notes or highlighting/underlining annihilation just yet.
4. Turn your attending to the introduction. The more than unfamiliar I am with the paper/field, the longer I spend in the intro. Authors tend to do a practiced job consolidating background info and providing copious amounts of references. This section is commonly the easiest to read and it almost feels like you are reading from a textbook. Accept notes of other references and background info y'all don't know or want to examine farther.
5. This function is extremely critical. Carefully step through each figure and try to become a feeling for what they are telling you. When I was an undergrad, my neuroscience mentor gave me some good advice. Paraphrasing: "Figures comprise some of the nigh of import information in a paper. Authors spend a lot of time creating them and deemed the information they contain to be of import plenty to communicate to the reader using a visual. Pay particular attention to them." You will non understand all the figures very well the first time you pace through them, but you lot will proceeds some idea of what the authors recall is most important, and you will also reveal valuable data about what to pay attention to when you read the other sections.
6. So far you have probably spent almost an hour. Take a break. Walk a scrap, relish a croissant!
7. At present yous are ready to make a outset laissez passer through the paper. This time you should first to take some high level notes. You will come upon words, and ideas that are strange to you. Don't feel like yous need to stop at every affair that does not make sense, y'all can merely marking it and move on. Aim to spend well-nigh an hour and a half. You don't want to get bogged down but yet in all the gory details. The goal of the showtime laissez passer is to get acquainted with the newspaper. Similar a first date. Your going to learn about the newspaper, ask some practiced questions, mayhap arrive express joy. But you don't want to go into every single niggling item. That is rude. Brainstorm again with the abstract, apace skim through the introduction, give the methods section a diligent pass. Pay attention to the overall fix, the methods section includes a ton of item you don't need to scrutinize every part at this betoken. Finally, read the results and word section aiming for some clarity on the key findings and how these findings were adamant. Think, the authors are trying to convince you, the reader, of the merit and findings of their work.
8. Saved by the bell. Have a break, do some jumping jacks and become the claret flowing. Unless you're in a coffee shop. Then don't do that.
9. Now that you have a good overview of the paper you are going to get into the nitty gritty of the figures. Having read the methods, results and word section, you should exist able to extract out more gems from the figures. Find those gems. Aim to spend some other 30 minutes to an hr on the figures.
10. You should feel confident in taking a second full pass through the newspaper. This fourth dimension you will exist reading with a very critical eye. This laissez passer tin can have a long time an hr or 2, you tin also save this for later in the solar day, or the following day. Pay particular attention to the areas you lot marked as being hard to sympathise. Leave no word undefined and brand sure you empathize each sentence. This pass you are trying to really learn the paper. Skim through areas you experience confident in (abstract, intros, results). The focus should be on shoring up what y'all did not understand previously, and gaining a command of the methods department and finally being a critical reader of the give-and-take section. The give-and-take section is where you can consider the authors' reasoning/rational and take what you learned from reading the newspaper and weigh it against bear witness supplied in the paper. This section should spark some interesting questions for you to ask your friends, or colleagues. You can fifty-fifty email the authors of the paper with an insightful question! Information technology might have them a while to get back to y'all, only authors do enjoy having dialogue regarding their research and are typically more than happy to answer a question for a reader.
11. At this point, you should feel confident talking nigh the paper with colleagues, thinking critically about the results, and being able to compare the work to other research in the field (if you have read other papers). To retain and enforce what you have learned, I suggest you write nearly the newspaper. Information technology tin can just be a few paragraphs nearly what you lot learned and the significance of the results. You can reference the listing of questions you lot were answering as you read through the newspaper.

As mentioned to a higher place, here is a general list of questions to help guide you. If you can respond these you have a solid agreement of the newspaper, at least to where you can communicate intelligently about it to others.

          1. What previous research and ideas were cited that this paper is building off of? (this info tends to live in the introduction)
2. Was at that place reasoning for performing this research, if so what was it? (introduction department)
iii. Clearly list out the objectives of the report
four. Was whatsoever equipment/software used? (methods section)
5. What variables were measured during experimentation? (methods)
half-dozen. Were whatever statistical tests used? What were their results? (methods/results section)
7. What are the chief findings? (results section)
8. How practise these results fit into the context of other research and their 'field'? (discussion section)
9. Explain each figure and discuss their significance.
10. Tin can the results be reproduced and is in that location whatsoever code available?
eleven. Name the authors, year, and championship of the paper!
12. Are whatsoever of the authors familiar, do you know their previous work?            
xiii. What key terms and concepts do I not know and need to await up in a dictionary, textbook, or inquire someone?
fourteen. What are your thoughts on the results? Do they seem valid?        

I recommend finding people either in person or online to hash out the paper. Start a journal club with a goal of getting through 1–ii papers a month. The amount of extra insight I have gained from discussing a newspaper with a friend is immense. Remember.. the merely affair better than suffering through a paper lone, is suffering through it with friends!

On another note there was a skillful article written by Keshav³ on how to read a paper. He introduces and explores a three phrase approach that might be of some interest to you lot. Give it a read besides!

Tools to Assist Y'all Go the Job Washed

Yous can notice papers primarily from several sources:

• arXiv: is an open-admission repository (maintained at Cornell) where you can freely download and read pre-impress research papers from many quantitative fields. Here is some more general info well-nigh arXiv. Many papers you find on the web will link back to the arXiv paper.
• PubMed: They say it best: "PubMed Fundamental® (PMC) is a free total-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health'south National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM)." PubMed has a robust search feature if you are looking for medical or life science related papers.
• Google Scholar: I use google scholar only as I would employ google. Simply search for a topic, writer or newspaper and google gets to work, on your behalf. Equally Google puts it "Google Scholar provides a unproblematic way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From ane place, you can search beyond many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from bookish publishers, professional person societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you observe relevant work beyond the world of scholarly research."
• Social media: I notice out about a lot of new papers only by following and keeping up with several people who actively publish. Added bonus.. they typically push button other papers they find interesting and which you might want to know about or read.
• Friends and colleagues: Find people interested in the same stuff as y'all, read papers with them and learn from each other. I get recommendations for good papers from friends. They act every bit adept filters.
• Academy: going to your local college or university (if there is one close by) gives you access to libraries, librarians (very helpful search wizards!) and many journals where yous can observe and read articles that are typically backside online paywalls.

As you brainstorm to read more papers you are going to want to store them somewhere. Tossing PDFs into a folder on your drive is all well and skillful, but there are brute comforts missing. Nigh researchers and grad students use a reference manager. Zotero and Mendeley are very popular, I similar Zotero. Recently, I have been using PaperPile. I like PaperPile considering it is lightweight, lives in my browser, and uses Google Drive to support and shop all my PDFs. It has a simple, refreshing user interface, and information technology has a really good tagging and folder hierarchy system. I can also annotate PDFs in my browser and build citation lists when I write. You get a lot of these features with nigh any reference managing director, but I happen to like PaperPile best.

A reference director volition speedily become your best friend as you lot collect and read more than and more than papers.

Thanks for reading through this. I hope you institute it helpful and it gave you some expert ideas when tackling your next newspaper. Most people have their own unique process when reading a newspaper. I am sure y'all volition develop your own tweaks in time, hopefully this is a skillful template for y'all to go started.

For now just trust the process.

I am also hoping that we will get some good feedback and comments with other tips and tricks from readers.

Thank you,

Kyle

Reach me at: datasci@kmshannon.com

linkedin.com/in/kmshannon/

twitter.com/ButFirstData

[1] Hubbard, K. Due east., & Dunbar, S. D. (2017). Perceptions of scientific research literature and strategies for reading papers depend on academic career stage. PloS i, 12(12), e0189753.

[2] Shout out to Chris at CoffeeCycle! Only the best java in San Diego.

[3] Keshav, S. (2007). How to read a paper. ACM SIGCOMM Figurer Communication Review, 37(3), 83–84.

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Source: https://towardsdatascience.com/guide-to-reading-academic-research-papers-c69c21619de6

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