Reading a Research Paper
Here is some advice that Professor Lakshmi Subramanian gave me about reading research papers. This is not general purpose advice; this is so that you can quickly get a sense of the value of a given paper for your own research needs.
- Read the title carefully
- Read the abstract carefully
- what is the problem
- what is their solution
- how do they measure success
- how is this relevant to me
- Read the first four paragraphs of the introduction
- specifics of problem
- related work
- methodology
- skim each subsequent paragraph more and more
- Read Section and Subsection titles
- read carefully the areas where the content is novel or most relevant
- Go through the paper again, skimming each section
- Go through the paper yet again, this time reading each section more carefully
- If enough interesting points, summarize research
- what was novel
- what was relevant
- what was “wow!” worthy