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How to Read a Research Paper – A Guide to Setting Research Goals, Finding Papers to Read, and More

If you work in a scientific field, you should try to build a deep and unbiased understanding of that field. This not only educates you in the best possible way but also helps you envision the opportunities in your space.

A research paper is often the culmination of a wide range of deep and authentic practices surrounding a topic. When writing a research paper, the author thinks critically about the problem, performs rigorous research, evaluates their processes and sources, organizes their thoughts, and then writes. These genuinely-executed practices make for a good research paper.

If you’re struggling to build a habit of reading papers (like I am) on a regular basis, I’ve tried to break down the whole process. I've talked to researchers in the field, read a bunch of papers and blogs from distinguished researchers, and jotted down some techniques that you can follow.

Let’s start off by understanding what a research paper is and what it is NOT!

What is a Research Paper?

A research paper is a dense and detailed manuscript that compiles a thorough understanding of a problem or topic. It offers a proposed solution and further research along with the conditions under which it was deduced and carried out, the efficacy of the solution and the research performed, and potential loopholes in the study.

A research paper is written not only to provide an exceptional learning opportunity but also to pave the way for further advancements in the field. These papers help other scholars germinate the thought seed that can either lead to a new world of ideas or an innovative method of solving a longstanding problem.

What Research Papers are NOT

There is a common notion that a research paper is a well-informed summary of a problem or topic written by means of other sources.

But you shouldn't mistake it for a book or an opinionated account of an individual’s interpretation of a particular topic.

Why Should You Read Research Papers?

What I find fascinating about reading a good research paper is that you can draw on a profound study of a topic and engage with the community on a new perspective to understand what can be achieved in and around that topic.

I work at the intersection of instructional design and data science. Learning is part of my day-to-day responsibilities. If the source of my education is flawed or inefficient, I’d fail at my job in the long term. This applies to many other jobs in Science with a special focus on research.

There are three important reasons to read a research paper:

• Knowledge —  Understanding the problem from the eyes of someone who has probably spent years solving it and has taken care of all the edge cases that you might not think of at the beginning.
• Exploration —  Whether you have a pinpointed agenda or not, there is a very high chance that you will stumble upon an edge case or a shortcoming that is worth following up. With persistent efforts over a considerable amount of time, you can learn to use that knowledge to make a living.
• Research and review —  One of the main reasons for writing a research paper is to further the development in the field. Researchers read papers to review them for conferences or to do a literature survey of a new field. For example, Yann LeCun’ s paper on integrating domain constraints into backpropagation set the foundation of modern computer vision back in 1989. After decades of research and development work, we have come so far that we're now perfecting problems like object detection and optimizing autonomous vehicles.

Not only that, with the help of the internet, you can extrapolate all of these reasons or benefits onto multiple business models. It can be an innovative state-of-the-art product, an efficient service model, a content creator, or a dream job where you are solving problems that matter to you.

Goals for Reading a Research Paper — What Should You Read About?

The first thing to do is to figure out your motivation for reading the paper. There are two main scenarios that might lead you to read a paper:

• Scenario 1 —  You have a well-defined agenda/goal and you are deeply invested in a particular field. For example, you’re an NLP practitioner and you want to learn how GPT-4 has given us a breakthrough in NLP. This is always a nice scenario to be in as it offers clarity.
• Scenario 2 —  You want to keep abreast of the developments in a host of areas, say how a new deep learning architecture has helped us solve a 50-year old biological problem of understanding protein structures. This is often the case for beginners or for people who consume their daily dose of news from research papers (yes, they exist!).

If you’re an inquisitive beginner with no starting point in mind, start with scenario 2. Shortlist a few topics you want to read about until you find an area that you find intriguing. This will eventually lead you to scenario 1.

ML Reproducibility Challenge

In addition to these generic goals, if you need an end goal for your habit-building exercise of reading research papers, you should check out the ML reproducibility challenge.

You’ll find top-class papers from world-class conferences that are worth diving deep into and reproducing the results.

They conduct this challenge twice a year and they have one coming up in Spring 2021. You should study the past three versions of the challenge, and I’ll write a detailed post on what to expect, how to prepare, and so on.

Now you must be wondering – how can you find the right paper to read?

How to Find the Right Paper to Read

In order to get some ideas around this, I reached out to my friend, Anurag Ghosh who is a researcher at Microsoft. Anurag has been working at the crossover of computer vision, machine learning, and systems engineering.

Here are a few of his tips for getting started:

• Always pick an area you're interested in.
• Read a few good books or detailed blog posts on that topic and start diving deep by reading the papers referenced in those resources.
• Look for seminal papers around that topic. These are papers that report a major breakthrough in the field and offer a new method perspective with a huge potential for subsequent research in that field. Check out papers from the morning paper or C VF - test of time award/Helmholtz prize (if you're interested in computer vision).
• Check out books like Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications by Richard Szeliski and look for the papers referenced there.
• Have and build a sense of community. Find people who share similar interests, and join groups/subreddits/discord channels where such activities are promoted.

In addition to these invaluable tips, there are a number of web applications that I’ve shortlisted that help me narrow my search for the right papers to read:

• r/MachineLearning  — there are many researchers, practitioners, and engineers who share their work along with the papers they've found useful in achieving those results.

• Arxiv Sanity Preserver  — built by Andrej Karpathy to accelerate research. It is a repository of 142,846 papers from computer science, machine learning, systems, AI, Stats, CV, and so on. It also offers a bunch of filters, powerful search functionality, and a discussion forum to make for a super useful research platform.

• Google Research  — the research teams at Google are working on problems that have an impact on our everyday lives. They share their publications for individuals and teams to learn from, contribute to, and expedite research. They also have a Google AI blog that you can check out.

How to Read a Research Paper

After you have stocked your to-read list, then comes the process of reading these papers. Remember that NOT every paper is useful to read and we need a mechanism that can help us quickly screen papers that are worth reading.

To tackle this challenge, you can use this Three-Pass Approach by S. Keshav . This approach proposes that you read the paper in three passes instead of starting from the beginning and diving in deep until the end.

The three pass approach

• The first pass —  is a quick scan to capture a high-level view of the paper. Read the title, abstract, and introduction carefully followed by the headings of the sections and subsections and lastly the conclusion. It should take you no more than 5–10 mins to figure out if you want to move to the second pass.
• The second pass —  is a more focused read without checking for the technical proofs. You take down all the crucial notes, underline the key points in the margins. Carefully study the figures, diagrams, and illustrations. Review the graphs, mark relevant unread references for further reading. This helps you understand the background of the paper.
• The third pass —  reaching this pass denotes that you’ve found a paper that you want to deeply understand or review. The key to the third pass is to reproduce the results of the paper. Check it for all the assumptions and jot down all the variations in your re-implementation and the original results. Make a note of all the ideas for future analysis. It should take 5–6 hours for beginners and 1–2 hours for experienced readers.

Tools and Software to Keep Track of Your Pipeline of Papers

If you’re sincere about reading research papers, your list of papers will soon grow into an overwhelming stack that is hard to keep track of. Fortunately, we have software that can help us set up a mechanism to manage our research.

Here are a bunch of them that you can use:

• Mendeley [not free]  — you can add papers directly to your library from your browser, import documents, generate references and citations, collaborate with fellow researchers, and access your library from anywhere. This is mostly used by experienced researchers.

• Zotero [free & open source] —  Along the same lines as Mendeley but free of cost. You can make use of all the features but with limited storage space.

• Notion —  this is great if you are just starting out and want to use something lightweight with the option to organize your papers, jot down notes, and manage everything in one workspace. It might not stand anywhere in comparison with the above tools but I personally feel comfortable using Notion and I have created this board to keep track of my progress for now that you can duplicate:

⚠️ Symptoms of Reading a Research Paper

Reading a research paper can turn out to be frustrating, challenging, and time-consuming especially when you’re a beginner. You might face the following common symptoms:

• You might start feeling dumb for not understanding a thing a paper says.
• Finding yourself pushing too hard to understand the math behind those proofs.
• Beating your head against the wall to wrap it around the number of acronyms used in the paper. Just kidding, you’ll have to look up those acronyms every now and then.
• Being stuck on one paragraph for more than an hour.

Here’s a complete list of emotions that you might undergo as explained by Adam Ruben in this article .

Key Takeaways

We should be all set to dive right in. Here’s a quick summary of what we have covered here:

• A research paper is an in-depth study that offers an detailed explanation of a topic or problem along with the research process, proofs, explained results, and ideas for future work.
• Read research papers to develop a deep understanding of a topic/problem. Then you can either review papers as part of being a researcher, explore the domain and the kind of problems to build a solution or startup around it, or you can simply read them to keep abreast of the developments in your domain of interest.
• If you’re a beginner, start with exploration to soon find your path to goal-oriented research.
• In order to find good papers to read, you can use websites like arxiv-sanity, google research, and subreddits like r/MachineLearning.
• Reading approach — Use the 3-pass method to find a paper.
• Keep track of your research, notes, developments by using tools like Zotero/Notion.
• This can get overwhelming in no time. Make sure you start off easy and increment your load progressively.

Remember: Art is not a single method or step done over a weekend but a process of accomplishing remarkable results over time.

You can also watch the video on this topic on my YouTube channel :

Feel free to respond to this blog or comment on the video if you have some tips, questions, or thoughts!

If this tutorial was helpful, you should check out my data science and machine learning courses on Wiplane Academy . They are comprehensive yet compact and helps you build a solid foundation of work to showcase.

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How to Read Research Papers— Unveiling AI Tool for Reading

Table of Contents

Reading research papers is an essential skill for students, academics, and professionals in various fields. It allows you to stay updated with the latest findings, develop critical thinking skills, and contribute to scholarly discussions. However, understanding these papers can be challenging due to their complex language and structure. That’s why we have written this article, which will provide you with comprehensive strategies on how to read a research paper effectively.

Let’s get started with how to identify the structure of a research paper!

Identify the structure of a research paper

Understanding the structure of a research paper is the first step toward how to read research paper effectively. Most research papers follow a standard structure, which includes an abstract , introduction , methodology , results, discussion and conclusion . Familiarizing yourself with the research paper structure can help you navigate the paper and understand its content.

Each section of a research paper serves a specific purpose. The abstract provides a summary of the entire research paper, the introduction presents the research question, the methodology explains how the research was conducted, the results section presents the findings, the discussion interprets these findings, and the conclusion summarizes the paper and suggests areas for future research.

Source: University of Wisconsin

Abstract: The abstract serves as a concise summary of the entire research paper. To efficiently grasp its content, focus on key elements such as the research question, methodology, and significant findings. This will provide a quick overview and help you decide whether the paper aligns with your interests.

Introduction: The research paper introduction sets the stage for the research, presenting the problem statement and the purpose of the study. Take note of the research gap, hypotheses, and objectives discussed here to understand the context of the paper.

Methodology: Understanding the methods employed in a study is crucial for evaluating the research's validity. Take note of the research design, data collection, and analysis methods to comprehend how the study was conducted.

Results: The results section presents the outcomes of the research. Approach this section with a critical mindset, assessing whether the results align with the research question and the methods used. Consider the implications of the findings within the broader context of the field.

Conclusion: The conclusion summarizes the key findings and their significance. It's a crucial part of the paper that brings together the entire study. Take the time to reflect on how the research contributes to the existing body of knowledge.

Citations: Follow the trail of references provided in the paper. This not only enhances your understanding but also leads you to related works that can deepen your knowledge of the subject.

More tips on how to read research papers effectively

Developing effective reading strategies can help you understand research papers more efficiently. These strategies include active reading, note-taking, and using AI tools for summarizing and understanding research papers.

Active reading involves engaging with the text, asking questions, and making connections. Note-taking helps you remember important information and organize your thoughts. Summarizing using AI tools allows you to condense the information and understand the main points of the paper easily.

Active Reading:

Active reading is a strategy that involves interacting with the text. This can include highlighting important information, making notes in the margins, and asking questions. Active reading can help you understand the content of the paper and remember it more effectively.

When reading a research paper, try to identify the main points, arguments, and evidence. Ask yourself questions like:

• What is the research question?
• What methods were used to answer it?
• What were the results? What conclusions were drawn?

This will help you engage with the paper and understand its content.

Source: https://idaho.pressbooks.pub/write/chapter/reading-for-writing/

Note-Taking:

Note-taking is another effective reading strategy. It involves writing down important information, ideas, and questions. Note-taking can help you remember the content of the paper, organize your thoughts, and prepare for discussions or writing assignments.

When taking notes, try to be concise and use your own words. This will help you understand the information and remember it more effectively. You can also use symbols or diagrams to represent complex ideas.

Source: University of Toronto

Using AI Tools to Summarize Research Paper:

When research papers are flooded with complex language, jargon, and acronyms, it’s important to use AI summarizer that helps you breakdown the sentences and makes it easier to read the information. In that case, you can make use of SciSpace Copilot which not only explains the highlighted section or paragraph, but also explains you the equations, tables, figures, and images present in the research paper. You can also rely on other AI tools to comprehend research papers in a short span of time.

Watch this video to learn how to use the AI summarizer:

Dealing with Technical Jargon:

Research papers often contain a lot of technical jargon. Don't be intimidated; instead, create a glossary for yourself. Look up unfamiliar terms and gradually build your understanding of the terminology used in your field of interest. As mentioned above, you can use AI summarizer to decode the jargon and get the essence of the research paper.

Joining Academic Communities:

Engage in discussions and forums related to your area of interest. Academic communities provide valuable insights, differing perspectives, and opportunities for networking with experts in the field.

Staying Updated on Research Trends:

To read research papers effectively, it's crucial to stay informed about the latest developments in your field. Subscribe to academic journals, follow reputable researchers on social media, and attend conferences or webinars to stay updated.

Using Academic Search Engines:

Make use of online tools and databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, SciSpace , and academic journals to access a vast repository of research papers. These platforms often provide additional features like citation tracking and related articles, enriching your reading experience.

Also Read: Beast Academic Search Engines(2024)

Reading research papers is a complex task that requires a good understanding of the structure of a research paper, effective reading strategies, and the ability to interpret results. However, with practice and patience, you can develop these skills and become proficient at reading research papers.

Remember, the goal is not just to read the paper, but to understand it, evaluate it, and use it to contribute to your own research or professional development.

Frequently Asked Questions

Active reading helps understand research papers better. It involves activities like highlighting, taking notes, asking questions, and summarizing. This makes it easier to understand and evaluate the research material.

Taking notes during research helps you remember important information, stay organized, avoid plagiarism, think critically, and serve as a reference for future use, allowing you to revisit key points and findings as needed.

SciSpace notebook is the go-to tool for taking notes effortlessly

The best AI tool for reading research papers varies based on individual needs. A popular AI tools include SciSpace Copilot.

Using AI tools to read research papers is easy. First, choose a tool, example — SciSpace Copilot. Then, upload your paper. It analyzes it and explains it in a language of your choice. You can then use this summary to help with your research or understanding of the topic.

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Getting into the right mindset to read scientific papers quickly:

Before you start anything, you need to isolate your singular goal for reading papers in the first place. Otherwise, you’ll be passively reading every paper that comes up rather than hunting for specific details. Don’t be a forager, consuming anything edible that crosses your path. Be a hunter: have a specific target that keeps you selective, efficient, and guides every step you take.

Most of these tips are designed to help you focus on extracting value efficiently so you won’t give up after two papers! So, what is your goal here? Is it:

• Getting a solid foundation in your field?
• Collecting the newest research for a cutting-edge literature review?
• Finding ideas and inspiration to further your own research?  

I’ll be honest here: The first dozen papers of a new subject will be a grind. But it gets easier, I promise! When you find yourself blasting through the “template” introduction and recognizing citations you’ve already read, you know you’re close to being an expert. At this point, if you’re struggling to understand a new paper in the field, it’s likely the authors’ fault, not yours. 

Keep in mind that academics aren’t exactly known for concise writing. Practice skimming paragraphs for high-value verbs, numerical values and claims. Skip over wordy low-value prose like “We thus appear to have potentially demonstrated a novel and eco-friendly synthesis method for…” It’s easy to fall back to a casual fiction-reading mentality. Try to stay in a high-energy search mode and you’ll be effectively done in half the time.

Later on I’ll reference our journal article notes template , which I used to synthesize notes for my literature review. Go ahead now and open it in Google Drive where you can download and edit it for free. We just ask that you drop your email so that we can stay in touch on new helpful resources and awesome new tools for scientists.

How do you read scientific papers effectively?

Below are my tips for how to read scientific papers most effectively. I used this methodology to write a critical literature review in a brand new field in about 4 months, citing over 150 papers. My first-author paper now has nearly 1000 citations in only six years since publication, making it my advisor’s most highly-cited paper in his 30-year career! You can do this. Just keep reading: 

1. Briefly read the Abstract

The abstract is your most condensed look at the paper. Read it quickly and highlight any claims or phrases that you want more details on. I like to copy the entire abstract text or screenshot into the journal article notes template for later reference. It also helps to copy the keyword text into the template or your citation manager tags so you can search for them later. Things to read for:

• Is the research applicable to what you need right now?
• Are the findings significant enough to help you with your goal?
• What is the most interesting aspect of this paper?

2. Carefully read the Conclusion

Reading the conclusion gives you an instant look at the quality of the paper. Do the authors seem to make claims bigger than appropriate for the scope of the paper? Do they use hyperbole to inflate the importance of the work? Are the results not clearly stated? These could be red flags identifying a poor quality paper. 

Highlight and copy a few of the most important phrases or sentences out of the conclusion into the journal article template in the first bulleted section or into the notes section of your reference manager. Look for:

• What the authors think they accomplished in this work.
• The reasoning behind their results. Any useful insights?
• Ideas for future experiments.  

3. Identify the most important figures and dig through the Results & Discussion for more detail

If you’re still interested after the first two steps, start digging into the results and discussion for more details. Before making the deep dive, write down the specific questions you need to answer in your notes section. Search the paper for those answers, writing down new questions as they come to mind. 

One favorite strategy here is to look at each figure, read the caption and then dig through the text for supporting information (use Ctrl+F for “Fig. 3”, for example). The figures should tell the story as well as (and more quickly than) the text. 

Copy and paste specific claims you may want to quote or paraphrase later. Isolate what the authors think they did from your own commentary and summarize it in your own words.

4. Search the Methods section to answer questions if necessary

The Methods section is usually the most tedious and tiring to read. That’s why we don’t do it first. Only go through it when necessary or you’ll never get to the 100 other papers you just downloaded.

Go back through the Methods when:

• This paper showed a different result than another similar paper, and the methods may have caused the difference. 
• You’re sure you want to include the paper and you want to be critical of the way they conducted their experiments. 
• You may want to replicate their experiment in your own work.

Make sure to note anything unique, odd, or unexpected in their methods. Maybe it will lead to a breakthrough in your own work or help explain a surprise result!

5. Summarize your thoughts and critiques

Re-read your notes so far to check for any missed questions. Go back and extract sentences or paragraphs of the paper that you want to challenge so you can quickly find them verbatim. Write your own thoughts and questions around those topics so you can copy them into your literature review later. Ideas for notes:

• What would you have done differently in the experiment or data analysis?
• Is there an obvious gap or follow-up experiment?
• Does this paper uniquely contribute to the field’s body of knowledge? What is its contribution?

6. Copy important figures into your notes

This is the most important step but many don’t do this. Figures are the anchors of every good journal article and the authors who spend the most time making excellent figures also will get cited the most often in review papers. This leads to even more citations from experimental articles. My secret for getting the most citations of my review paper was to spend more time than typical finding or creating the best possible figures for explaining the content. You can do this too, it just takes time!

The best reference manager Zotero doesn’t have an “add image” button in the “Notes” section but you can actually screenshot the image with the Snipping Tool then Ctrl+v paste it into the notes section! Now when you come back to the paper you’ll get an instant look at the most significant figures. If you know you want to use one of these figures in your review, add a tag to the paper like “Figure Rev. Paper 1”.

7. Pick important references (especially review papers) out of the Introduction and Discussion

Now that you have a good understanding of the paper, it’s time to start tidying things up and thinking of where to go next. Skim the introduction for helpful references or check the first 5-10 listed in the References section to find mostly review papers you can use for new leads. Go and download these into an “Unread review papers” folder in your citation manager for when you get stuck later. 

Then, go to the journal/library website and check for new papers that have cited this paper. This will help you follow the trail of a specific research topic to see how it’s developing. Download the interesting ones and put them in an “unread” folder for this very specific research topic. In Zotero, you can even tag the paper as “related” to the current paper for quick access later.  

8. Clean up the metadata if you plan on citing this paper later

If there’s a chance you’ll cite this paper later, make sure to clean up the metadata so your word processor citation plugin creates a clean reference section. Author initials may be backward, special characters in the title may be corrupted, the year or issue of the journal could be missing or the “type” of citation could be wrong (listed as a book instead of journal article) which would change the format.

Fully tag the paper using whatever system you’ve come up with. Keywords, chemicals, characterization methods or annotation tags like “Best” can all be useful. One other trick I used was to come up with an acronym for the paper I was about to write - “NMOBH” for example - and use that as a tag in any paper that I planned to cite later.

Being methodical in your post-read organization will save you many hours and endless frustration later on. Follow these tips on how to organize your research papers and you’ll be a pro in no time. You’re almost done, but don’t skip this part!

9. Take a break, then repeat!

This methodology makes it a little easier to get through a paper quickly once you get some practice at it. But what about 10 papers? 100?! You can’t do all of your reading in a week. I set a habit for myself over the summer to read two papers a day for 2 months. If I missed a day, I made it up the next day. This keeps you fresh for each paper and less likely to miss important points because you’re falling asleep!

Get comfortable. I preferred to kick back on a couch or outside in a chair using my laptop in tablet mode so I had a long vertical screen and a stylus to highlight or circle things. Reading 2-column scientific articles on a 13 inch 16:9 laptop screen at a desk for hours on end is a special kind of torture that I just couldn’t endure. Change scenery often, try different beverages, take breaks, and move around!

Here are some bonus tips for breaking the monotony between papers:

• Pick your top few most controversial, confusing, or interesting papers and ask a colleague or advisor for their thoughts. Bring them some coffee to discuss it with you for another perspective. 
• Email the authors to ask a question or thank them for their contribution. This is a great way to make a connection. Don’t ask for too much on the first email or they may not respond - they are busy!  
• Reward yourself for every paper read. Maybe a small snack or a short walk around the block. Physically cross this paper off your to-do list so you internalize the good feeling of the accomplishment!

How do you choose which papers to read next?

So you’re downloading 15 new papers for every 1 paper you read? This could get out of control quickly! How do you keep up? Here are some tips for prioritization:

Google Scholar is an excellent tool for tracking citation trees and metrics that show the “importance” of each paper. Library portals or the journal websites can also be good for this.

• If you’re starting a search on a new topic, begin with a relevant review paper if one exists. Beware of reading too many review papers in a row! You’ll end up with an intimidating pile of citations to track down and it will be difficult to know where to start after a few-day break. 
• Prioritize experimental papers with high citation numbers, in journals with high impact factors and by authors with a high h-index (30+) published within the last 5 years. These papers will set the bar for every paper you read after. You can check the journal’s rank in your field by using Scimago . 
• Identify the most prominent authors in this field and find their most recent papers that may not have many citations (yet). This indicates where the field is heading and what the top experts are prioritizing. 
• After you’ve covered a lot of ground above, start taking more chances on less-established authors who may be taking new approaches or exploring new topics. By now you’ll be well-equipped to identify deficiencies in methods, hyperbolic claims, and arguments that are not well-supported by data. 

Final takeaways for how to read a scientific paper:

• Don't be a passive word-for-word reader. Be actively hunting and searching for info.
• Read in this order: Abstract, Conclusion, Figures, Results/Discussion, Methods.
• The figures are the anchors. Save the best ones to reproduce in your article and spend extra time to create your own summary figures to supercharge your chances of citation.
• Clean up the metadata and use a good tagging system to save time later. 
• Set your daily goal, reward yourself for finishing, and take breaks to avoid burnout!

Lastly, remember that this blog is sponsored by BioBox Analytics ! BioBox is a data analytics platform designed for scientists and clinicians working with next-generation-sequencing data. Design and run bioinformatic pipelines on demand, generate publication-ready plots, and discover insights using popular public databases. Get on the waitlist and be the first to access a free account at biobox.io !

What sections of a research paper should you read first?

The Abstract and Conclusion sections of a research paper give you a quick sense if you should continue spending time on the paper. Assess the quality of the research and whether the results are significant to your goals. If so, move to the most important Figures and find additional details in the Results and Discussion when necessary. 

What is the fastest way to read a research article?

Skim the Abstract and highlight anything of interest. Skip to the Conclusions and do the same. Write questions that pop up. Examine each Figure and find the in-line reference text for further details if needed for understanding. Then search the Results and Discussion for answers to your pre-written questions.  

What is the best citation manager software to use for my scientific papers?

I used Mendeley through grad school but recently Zotero seems to be more popular. Both are free and have all the features you need! EndNote is excellent but expensive, and if you lose your institutional license you’ll have a hard time transferring to one of the free offerings. Zotero is your best bet for long-term organizational success!

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How To Read Research Papers

Coursesteach

Introduction:

Research papers are the lifeblood of scientific progress, serving as the foundation for new discoveries and innovations. However, for many, delving into the complex world of academic literature can be a daunting task. Fear not, as this guide aims to demystify the process of reading research papers, empowering you to navigate through the jargon and extract valuable insights.

In particular, what I want to do today i share with you some advice on how to read research papers because you know deep learning is evolving fast enough that even though you’ve learned a lot of foundations of deep learning and learned a lot of the tips and tricks, and you probably know better than many practitioners how to get deep learning algorithms to work already. when you’re working on specific applications, whether in computer vision or national language processing or speech recognition or something else, for you to be able to efficiently figure out the academic literature on key parts of the deep learning world will help you keep on developing and, you know, staying on top of ideas even as they evolve for the next several years or maybe decades [1].

So it turns out that, you know, reading research papers is one of those things that a lot of PhD students learn via osmosis, right? Meaning that if you’re a PhD student and you see, you know, a few professors or see other PhD students do certain things, then you might try to pick it up by osmosis. But I hope today to accelerate your efficiency and how you acquire knowledge yourself, from the academic literature, right?

Choose Wisely: Selecting the Right Paper (List) Scan Title, Abstracts, and Summaries First (Scan) Understand the Structure: Breaking Down Sections Crack the Code: Deciphering Jargon and Abbreviations Focus Deep Dive into the Methodology Navigate the Results Section: Tables and Figures Join the Discussion: Unpacking the Findings Read Citations and References Take Notes and Summarize Engage in Active Learning: Discuss and Share Try to answer the Questions Go All-In Conclusion

Section 1- Choose Wisely: Selecting the Right Paper (List)

Before diving into the depths of a research paper, it’s crucial to select papers relevant to your interests or research goals. Look for papers published in reputable journals, and consider the author’s expertise and the paper’s citation count. This preliminary filtering ensures that your time is invested in papers with credible information.The f irst pass gives you a general idea about the paper

• Create a curated list of research paper blogs and related resources to streamline your study [1] First, compile a list of papers, and by papers, I mean both research papers often posted on archives or on the internet, but also plus medium post, what- maybe some occasional GitHub post, although those are r, but whatever text or learning resources you have [1].
• Read a set of papers, which is maybe you initially start off with five papers
• Read 10% of each paper or try to quickly skim and understand each of these papers.
• And if based on that, you decide that paper number 2 is a Good, right?, you skip around the different papers, you might decide that paper 3 is a really seminal one and then spend a lot of time to go ahead and read and understand the whole thing.
• if you read 5 to 20 papers you will get a basic understanding of the area
• if you read 50 to 100 papers then you will get a very good understanding of the areas
• Do not go from the first word and read until the last word
• Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else

Section 2- Scan Title, Abstracts, and Summaries First (Scan)

The abstract is your key to understanding the paper’s main objectives, methods, and conclusions. Begin by reading the abstract and any executive summaries, if available. This will give you a bird’s-eye view of the paper, helping you decide whether it aligns with your interests and goals.

Read the title for a quick context, the abstract for a summary, and examine figures to grasp visual representation [1]and skip the related work.

At the end of the first pass, you should be able to answer the five Cs [2]:

• 1. Category: What type of paper is this? A measurement paper? An analysis of an existing system? A description of a research prototype?
• 2. Context: Which other papers is it related to? Which theoretical bases were used to analyze the problem? 3.
• Correctness: Do the assumptions appear to be valid?
• 4. Contributions: What are the paper’s main contributions?
• 5. Clarity: Is the paper well written?

Section 3- Understand the Structure: Breaking Down Sections

Research papers typically follow a standard structure: introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion , and conclusion. Familiarize yourself with these sections to grasp the paper’s flow and organization. Understanding this structure makes it easier to locate specific information and follow the author’s logical progression.

Section 4- Crack the Code: Deciphering Jargon and Abbreviations

Academic writing is notorious for its use of complex language and specialized terminology. Make use of online resources, glossaries, and dictionaries to decode unfamiliar terms. Take the time to jot down and understand abbreviations commonly used in your field of interest. This initial effort will pay off in the long run as you encounter similar terms across various papers. 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 [2].

Section 5- Focus

Read the introduction to understand the problem context and the conclusions for key takeaways [1]. Read the introduction, conclusion, and Figures and skip the reset

Section 6- Deep Dive into the Methodology

Understanding the methodology is crucial as it outlines how the research was conducted. Take note of the study design, sample size, data collection methods, and statistical analyses used. A clear grasp of the methodology helps you evaluate the study’s validity and reliability, providing a solid foundation for interpreting the results.

Section 7- Navigate the Results Section: Tables and Figures

Results are often presented through tables and figures. Learn to interpret these visual aids, as they convey complex information more efficiently than lengthy paragraphs. Pay attention to the patterns, trends, and statistical significance indicated in the visuals, and cross-reference them with the accompanying text.

Section 8- Join the Discussion: Unpacking the Findings

The discussion section is where the author interprets the results and relates them to existing literature. Evaluate the author’s arguments, identifying strengths and weaknesses in their reasoning. Consider alternative interpretations and implications, fostering a critical mindset that contributes to your own understanding.

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 [2].

Section 9- Read Citations and References

A paper’s bibliography can serve as a goldmine for additional resources. Check the references to explore related studies and gain a deeper understanding of the context. This not only enhances your knowledge but also provides a trail of breadcrumbs for further research.

Section 10- Take Notes and Summarize

As you read, jot down key points, questions, and your own reflections. Creating concise summaries of each section helps reinforce your understanding and serves as a handy reference when revisiting the paper later.

Section 11- Engage in Active Learning: Discuss and Share

Learning doesn’t end with reading. Actively engage with the material by discussing it with peers, joining academic forums, or even presenting the findings in a study group. Sharing perspectives enhances your understanding and introduces you to different interpretations.

Section 12- Try to answer the Questions

When you read the paper then try to answer these Questions

• What are the key elements of the approach?
• What can you use yourself?
• What other usefulness you do you want to follow?

Section 13- Go All-In

Read everything, skipping the math and unclear or less relevant parts, initially and revisit them in subsequent passes [1]

Mastering the art of reading research papers is a skill that pays dividends in academia and beyond. By following these steps, you can confidently navigate through the intricate web of scientific literature, unlocking the wealth of knowledge hidden within each paper. Remember, patience and practice are key, so start small and gradually build your expertise. Happy reading!

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Infographic: How to read a scientific paper

April 5, 2021 | 3 min read

By Natalia Rodriguez

Mastering this skill can help you excel at research, peer review – and writing your own papers

Much of a scientist’s work involves reading research papers, whether it’s to stay up to date in their field, advance their scientific understanding, review manuscripts, or gather information for a project proposal or grant application. Because scientific articles are different from other  texts, like novels or newspaper stories, they should be read differently.

Research papers follow the well-known IMRD format — an abstract followed by the  I ntroduction,  M ethods,  R esults and  D iscussion. They have multiple cross references and tables as well as supplementary material, such as data sets, lab protocols and gene sequences. All those characteristics  can make them dense and complex. Being able to effectively understanding them is a matter of practice.

You can use ScienceDirect’s recommendations service to find other articles related to the work you’re reading.  Once you've registered opens in new tab/window , the recommendations engine uses an adaptive algorithm to understand your research interests. It can then find related content from our database of more than 3,800 journals and over 37,000 book titles. The more frequently you sign in, the better it gets to know you, and the more relevant the recommendations you'll receive. Reading a scientific paper should not be done in a linear way (from beginning to end); instead, it should be done strategically and with a critical mindset, questioning your understanding and the findings. Sometimes you will have to go backwards and forwards, take notes and have multiples tabs opened in your browser.

LennyRhine. “ How to Read a Scientific Paper opens in new tab/window ,” Research4Life Training portal

Valerie Matarese, PhD (Ed). “ Usingstrategic, critical reading of research papers to teach scientific writing opens in new tab/window ,” Supporting Research Writing: Rolesand challenges in multilingual settings,” Chandos Publishing, Elsevier (2012)

Allen H. Renear, PhD, and Carole L. Palmer, PhD. " StrategicReading, Ontologies, and the Future of Scientific Publishing opens in new tab/window ," Science (2009).

Angel Borja, PhD. “ 11 steps to structuring a science paper editors will take seriously ,” Elsevier Connect (June 24, 2014)

Mary Purugganan, PhD, and Jan Hewitt, PhD. “ How to Read a Scientific Article opens in new tab/window ,” Cain Project in Engineering andProfessional Communication, Rice University

“How to Read and Review a Scientific Journal Article,”Writing Studio, Duke University

Robert Siegel, PhD. “ ReadingScientific Papers opens in new tab/window ,” Stanford University

Related resources

Elsevier Researcher Academy opens in new tab/window Free e-learning modules developed by global experts; career guidance and advice; research news on our blog.

Research4Life Training Portal opens in new tab/window : A platform with free downloadable resources for researchers. The Authorship Skills section contains 10 modules, including how to read and write scientific papers, intellectual property and web bibliography along with hands-on activity workbooks.

Career Advice portal of Elsevier Connect : Stories include tips for publishing in an international journal, how to succeed in a PhD program, and how to make your mark in the world of science.

Contributor

Natalia Rodriguez

Guide to Reading Academic Research Papers

Learn to tackle this laborious process with a systematic approach.

Kyle M Shannon

Towards Data Science

Working in data science and machine learning is an exciting and challenging field. New techniques and tools are constantly percolating and honestly, it can feel overwhelming. Many of these new developments are found and first revealed in academic research articles. Extracting knowledge from these articles is difficult because the intended audience of these papers tend to be other researchers. Yet in order to stay current reading papers is an essential skill — luckily one that can be improved with diligence and practice.

In graduate school, you get 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 hold. Public tax money is how most of this research gets funded anyways! The goal here is to democratize academia, just a bit, and provide you with a scaffolding to apply when walking through a paper.

The way I read papers is not significantly unique, but it is effective and has served me well. Keep in mind it is not the only way, many techniques exist and as you read more and more I am sure you will find your own unique style.

This guide is broken down as follows:

• Learning this skill will help you! I promise
• So I hear reading a paper is difficult. Why?
• How are papers typically organized?
• My “ bullet proof ” approach to reading papers
• Tools to help you get the job done

Why Learn to Read Papers?

Reading papers certainly builds character because It often takes many hours and there is no guarantee you walk away with the whole story. This is not to disparage you, but merely to be open and transparent. Reading papers is difficult, there are no two ways about it. Advances in fields such as machine learning, deep learning, data science, databases, and data engineering often come in the form of academic research, whose language is that of academic papers. Think about some of the techniques you might use: Convolutional Neural Networks , PCA , and AdaBoost (even Deep Boosting !). These all came out of research, and yes they all have papers. Also, consider that there are many papers on the application and use of these techniques and when you are trying to solve a specific problem, these papers can be critical. Beyond staying current with research it is also worth traveling to the past and giving older papers a read. You will learn so much. I promise.

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

Where the Difficulties Arise…

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

A : The proportion of participants considering a section easy to read (presented as ‘Somewhat easy’, ‘easy’ ‘very easy’ combined) as a function of career stage. Results of Chi-square tests are indicated on the left hand side. B: The mean importance rank of sections as a function of career stage. Error bars are omitted from individual points for clarity, with the sole error bar in grey representing the largest 95% confidence interval for any of the data points. Asterisks above data points indicate significant 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 find 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 important, ostensibly because as academics they have greater skill in their field, allowing them to be critical of a paper’s methods. It also means they know their field very well, thereofore, the introduction and abstract have less importance. Early stage PhD students find the methods, results, and figures fairly difficult to understand. This makes perfect sense as those are the areas of a paper that require the most knowledge of a field to get through. You are likely to have a similar experience.

What is it exactly that makes going through this process so difficult and time consuming?

• Authors tend to assume significant background 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 — you need experience to get a job, but need a job to get experience!)
• Not all conclusions drawn are correct. Small sample size and power, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting ensures that you must be a critical reader!

Clearly there is a lot to consider when reading a paper. Scared? Time 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 dense they are, will keep you regular.

Think about this, the more papers you read, the more you will learn and the faster this process of reading becomes. Trends start cropping up into plain view, and you begin to gain insight into the scientific method , understand what certain authors and groups are working on, and form an appreciation for the field you are learning about. Over time all of this knowledge and skill builds into your ability to read papers quicker, more efficiently and with greater success. Learning to read papers is akin to learning to eat. It is messy at first, and your palette is not very well developed. But over time your eating experience enhances and you learn more about what you like and don’t like and when a chef’s meal is good and poor.

How Papers are Organized

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

• Title: Hopefully catchy, possibly sexy! Includes additional info about the authors and their institutions
• Abstract: High level summary
• Introduction: Background info on the field and related research leading up to this paper
• Methods: Highly detailed section on the study that was conducted, how it was set up, any instruments used, and finally, the process and workflow
• Results: Authors talk about the data that was created or collected, it should read as an unbiased account of what occurred
• Discussions: Here is where authors interpret the results, and convince the readers of their findings and hypothesis
• References: Any other work that was cited in the body of the text will show up here
• 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 to read it’s important to have a plan. Simply starting to read from page one to the end will probably do you no good. Beyond retaining limited information, you will be exhausted and have gained very little for the tremendous effort. This is where many people stop.

Do plan to spend anywhere from 3–6 hours to really digest a paper, remember they are very dense! Be ready and willing to make several passes through the paper, each time looking to extract different information and understanding. And please, do yourself a favor and do not read the paper front to end on your first pass.

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

Let’s get started!

• Try to find a quiet place for a few hours and grab your favorite beverage (could be coffee, tea, or anything really). Nowadays I often find myself working in splendid coffee shops².
• Start by reading the title and abstract . Aiming to gain a high level overview of the paper. What are the main goal(s) of the author(s) and the high level results. The abstract typically provides some clues into the purpose of the paper. Think of the abstract as advertisement.
• Spend about 15 minutes skimming the paper. Take a quick look at the figures and note any 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. You will be referencing back and forth between the different sections and pages later on, it helps knowing where stuff is located. Try not to spend time taking any notes or highlighting/underlining anything just yet.
• Turn your attention to the introduction . The more unfamiliar I am with the paper/field, the longer I spend in the intro. Authors tend to do a good job consolidating background info and providing copious amounts of references. This section is usually the easiest to read and it almost feels like you are reading from a textbook. Take notes of other references and background info you don’t know or want to examine further.
• This part is extremely critical. Carefully step through each figure and try to get a feeling for what they are telling you. When I was an undergrad, my neuroscience mentor gave me some good advice. Paraphrasing: “ Figures contain some of the most important information in a paper. Authors spend a lot of time creating them and deemed the information they contain to be important enough to communicate to the reader using a visual. Pay particular attention to them. ” You will not understand all the figures very well the first time you step through them, but you will gain some idea of what the authors think is most important, and you will also reveal valuable information about what to pay attention to when you read the other sections.
• So far you have probably spent about an hour. Take a break. Walk a bit, enjoy a croissant!
• Now you are ready to make a first pass through the paper. This time you should start to take some high level notes. You will come upon words, and ideas that are foreign to you. Don’t feel like you need to stop at every thing that does not make sense, you can simply mark it and move on. Aim to spend about an hour and a half. You don’t want to get bogged down just yet in all the gory details. The goal of the first pass is to get acquainted with the paper. Like a first date. Your going to learn about the paper, ask some good questions, maybe make it laugh. But you don’t want to get into every single little detail. That is rude. Begin again with the abstract , quickly skim through the introduction , give the methods section a diligent pass. Pay attention to the overall set up, the methods section includes a ton of detail you don’t need to scrutinize every part at this point. Finally, read the results and discussion section aiming for some clarity on the key findings and how these findings were determined. Remember, the authors are trying to convince you, the reader, of the merit and findings of their work.
• Saved by the bell. Take a break, do some jumping jacks and get the blood flowing. Unless you’re in a coffee shop. Then don’t do that.
• 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 discussion section, you should be able to extract out more gems from the figures. Find those gems. Aim to spend another 30 minutes to an hour on the figures.
• You should feel confident in taking a second full pass through the paper. This time you will be reading with a very critical eye. This pass can take a long time an hour or two, you can also save this for later in the day, or the following day. Pay particular attention to the areas you marked as being difficult to understand. Leave no word undefined and make sure you understand each sentence. This pass you are trying to really learn the paper. Skim through areas you feel confident in (abstract, intros, results). The focus should be on shoring up what you did not understand previously, and gaining a command of the methods section and finally being a critical reader of the discussion section. The discussion section is where you can consider the authors’ reasoning/rational and take what you learned from reading the paper and weigh it against evidence supplied in the paper. This section should spark some interesting questions for you to ask your friends, or colleagues. You can even email the authors of the paper with an insightful question! It might take them a while to get back to you, but authors do enjoy having dialogue regarding their research and are typically more than happy to answer a question for a reader.
• At this point, you should feel confident talking about 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 about the paper. It can simply be a few paragraphs about what you learned and the significance of the results. You can reference the list of questions you were answering as you read through the paper.

As mentioned above, here is a general list of questions to help guide you. If you can answer these you have a solid understanding of the paper, at least to where you can communicate intelligently about it to others.

I recommend finding people either in person or online to discuss the paper. Start a journal club with a goal of getting through 1–2 papers a month. The amount of extra insight I have gained from discussing a paper with a friend is immense. Remember.. the only thing better than suffering through a paper alone, is suffering through it with friends!

On another note there was a good 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. Give it a read as well!

Tools to Help You Get the Job Done

You can find papers primarily from several sources:

• a rXiv : is an open-access repository (maintained at Cornell) where you can freely download and read pre-print research papers from many quantitative fields. Here is some more general info about arXiv. Many papers you find on the web will link back to the arXiv paper.
• PubMed : They say it best: “ PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s 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 just as I would use google. Simply search for a topic, author or paper and google gets to work, on your behalf. As Google puts it “ Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research. ”
• Social media: I find out about a lot of new papers simply by following and keeping up with several people who actively publish. Added bonus.. they typically push 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 you, read papers with them and learn from each other. I get recommendations for good papers from friends. They act as good filters.
• University: 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 you can find and read articles that are typically behind online paywalls.

As you begin 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 good, but there are creature comforts missing. Most researchers and grad students use a reference manager . Zotero and Mendeley are very popular, I like Zotero. Recently, I have been using PaperPile . I like PaperPile because it is lightweight, lives in my browser, and uses Google Drive to back up and store all my PDFs. It has a simple, refreshing user interface, and it 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 almost any reference manager, but I happen to like PaperPile best.

A reference manager will quickly become your best friend as you collect and read more and more papers.

Thanks for reading through this. I hope you found it helpful and it gave you some good ideas when tackling your next paper. Most people have their own unique process when reading a paper. I am sure you will develop your own tweaks in time, hopefully this is a good template for you to get 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.

Reach me at: [email protected] linkedin.com/in/kmshannon/ twitter.com/ButFirstData

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

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

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

Written by Kyle M Shannon

As a data scientist my ultimate goal is to continue deciphering order from the chaos. Co-founder & Data Soothsayer - linkedin.com/in/kmshannon/

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How to Read More Research Papers?

Do you read research papers? It can look overwhelming at first, but here's how to make it more friendly and efficient.

Louis Bouchard

Two years ago, I saw my first research paper ever. I remember how old it looked and how discouraging the mathematics inside was. It really did look like what the researchers worked on in movies. To be fair, the paper was from the 1950s, but it hasn’t changed much since then. Fastforward to this day, I’ve gained a lot of experience reading them after reading a few hundred papers in the last year for my youtube channel, where I try to explain them simply. Still, I know how overwhelming a first read can be, especially the first read of your first research paper. This is why I felt like sharing my best tips and practical tools I use daily to simplify my life and be more efficient when looking for interesting research papers and reading them.

How to Find the Appropriate Papers for You?

Before reading a research paper, you must find one. So I will share some of the tools I use when looking for an interesting paper for my use case or for a video I am working on. If you want to hear about the reading tips, go right to the next section!

First of all, you need a topic. Let’s say you want to study how transformers work applied to computer vision. Then, having this topic in mind, I would use 42 Papers or Arxiv Sanity and type in “vision transformers” to collect a few papers. Both these websites are amazing collections of curated Arxiv papers facilitating your life. Suppose you have a specific task in mind, like “image matting,” which refers to removing the background of a picture and leaving only the object of interest as the foreground. In that case, you can directly use Papers With Code as I did here , which can be extremely useful, providing the current best papers for the task you want to solve with their code implementations. Again, I would select a few of the best papers for the task.

If you don’t have a topic in mind, you can easily pick an interesting paper following the trends in either these fantastic tools: 42 Papers that I just discussed or Daily Papers that show all the trending papers on Twitter. It is pretty cool!

I Have a Few Research Papers to Read, Now What?

Now that you have a few research papers on your reading list, please don’t read all of them one by one. Instead, I invite you to try my approach that could save you a lot of time.

First, I would check the references and confirm that the paper is worth reading or not. If there are just a few and impertinent citations, it is not a good sign. In the same way, a quick tip for helping to figure out if an article is worth reading or not is to visualize the citations. To do this, you can use a fantastic tool called Connected Papers that graphs the connections between all sources of your paper, only giving it the paper's name. This is pretty cool! If they are inter-connected and well known, there is credibility. Of course, this is just a quick indication of whether or not a paper may be interesting and well made, as it indicates that it took the time to research current approaches and investigate them. But you should not judge a paper only by its number of citations since "nonreplicable publications are cited more than replicable ones," and replicability is a clear measure of quality.

Once it passed the first test and has trusted citations, you make the first pass for all your papers: read the title, abstract, keywords, and conclusion. See if they are really about what you are looking for. It will give you a basic idea about the paper and will help you decide whether you want to keep on reading it or not.

Second, do another pass! This time, go a bit more in-depth. Look at the graphs and tables, read their captions. You can also quickly go through the introduction and related works to see if you find it interesting and well done, but don’t dive into the method and experiments right away. This takes time to digest and understand. You need to be sure it is the right paper for you. This second pass will help you get the crisp of the paper, and by then, you will already be able to summarize it and the results.

Now that you know this is the paper for you, the list must be narrowed down. The only thing left is to read the papers that made it to this third pass! This third pass is quite obvious: you read the paper. But do not just read it. Dive in it . Take your pencil, highlighter, or annotation tool and start reading it in silence. For this, I personally prefer to print them directly and annotate on the actual paper itself, but I am transitioning to staying on my computer screen using the PDF reader tool Adobe Acrobat Reader where you can both highlight, draw, and comment on the PDF. I used this tool by default, and I like it, but please let me know if you know a better tool for this use case! I will check it out, try it, and edit my article to add better tools.

You should also surely Google the words and concepts you don’t understand and check the citations when the authors refer to someone else’s implementation. Skipping these will hurt your understanding of the overall paper during this final read, which you may have to repeat to completely sink in the information, especially if you are a “beginner paper-reader,” note your questions and highlight anything that seems a bit complicated or unclear. You can google the questions right away, but do not stay stuck if they remain after a second read! Ask a friend , or if you don’t have any friends in the field to help you, ask in a community or forum! There are dozen of amazing communities where you can ask questions 24/7 and get an answer, that it be on Discord, Reddit, Linkedin, Facebook, Slack, etc. Join one or more and exchange with fellow researchers!

Now that you know how I personally find and read research papers after months of improving this process, you may want to keep on reading for a few more minutes as I will share the tools that changed my life as an AI researcher …

The Best Tools Any Data Scientists / AI Researcher Should Have

I already talked about the amazing search tools I use: Arxiv Sanity Preserver, 42 Papers, and Papers With Code, but these aren’t useful for understanding a paper. I discovered, mainly because I am myself doing it, that many people explain these research papers in YouTube videos. Indeed, some fantastic people like Yannic Kilcher , What’s AI , Letitia dive into the new research papers and explain them clearly. Of course, to get a rapid overview without diving into the theory, the classic Two Minute Papers does a fantastic job. This can be of immense help and save you a lot of time and questions, which is why I often start by watching a video of the paper before reading it. What is even better is that not only do people like Yannic and I cover research papers on YouTube, but you do not have to google it anymore. Using a Google Chrome Add-On I recently discovered called crossmind s.ai , the videos will appear directly on the Arxiv page of the paper you want to read. How cool is that?! Here is an example where the crossmind video appears directly on the page with a recent paper called the “Swin Transformer,” which is about a transformer architecture applied to vision applications.

I must say, crossmind made me discover great YouTube channels and helped me a lot to understand research papers while saving precious time. This is, for sure, my best discovery of 2020.

Similarly, using Medium is a great way to find paper summaries and great explanations, either on Towards AI or Towards Data Science publications . I also share my own articles there and I love the platform. You can subscribe to medium using my affiliated link here if you'd like to support me at the same time!

Another pretty amazing tool is more related to implementing these papers. Obviously, if you reached the third pass of my guide, it probably means that the paper is worth reading to you, but I would also bet my right arm that you would like to implement it and make it work. If you found your paper on Papers With Code, then you are already good to go. Otherwise, you may need some Googling to find the official implementation or just an unofficial implementation to start with. Again, this awesome add-on removes the Googling need and gives you the code of any research paper on Arxiv, if applicable . This precious add-on is called CatalyzeX, and it is available on both Google Chrome and Firefox. It gives you the link to the code directly on the Arxiv page, just like crossmind, which is incredibly practical.

Here were all my best tips and tools for finding the most appropriate research papers for you, reading them as efficiently as possible while retaining the most information possible. To me, repetition is surely the best way to learn , which is why I recommended reading the papers more than once if you really want to understand them. Repetition from different learning sources is also an incredible advantage when it comes to learning something new. In our case, we can easily profit from this with YouTube. Indeed, you can simply listen to someone explain the paper to you for free, giving your brain other sensorial queues to sink in even more information. This is an incredible advantage this field has, and you must exploit it!

Once you found an interesting paper, I strongly recommend you save it in a reference management software like Zotero . It is entirely free and allows you to organize your papers, easily export references, save PDFs, and more with a simple click. It is a handy tool already implemented in Word and Google Docs to generate your bibliographies automatically.

A Few Words on Bias and Trustworthiness

There are no tips to detecting how trustworthy a paper is other than carefully reading and analyze the experiment section and see if it fits the methodology. You should never take what the authors wrote for free as, even if they were sincere, something might have changed since then, or they may have made a mistake during the experiments or when concluding based on their results. Similarly, you should not blindly trust the experiment section. You should also double-check the plots and tables to see if the scalings are the same, to be sure the authors didn’t try to eye trick the reader to make us misleadingly feel like they are better by a clear margin. As you know, the conclusion is simply what the authors concluded from their results. This means that even if it’s a great and quick way to understand what the paper is about, the conclusion is also subject to errors and author bias. It also means that you could’ve come to a different conclusion from the same experiments and results.

In final words, the only way to get better at reading papers and more efficient is to read papers. Don’t be afraid and dive in! The more you read, the better you will become. Start with videos about research papers and then dive into them with a fresh explanation in mind. It will be much easier.

Thank you for reading! Let me know if you have any more tips I may have missed that I could benefit from, always keen to learn!

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Where can I find research papers to read? (not currently in academia)

I have graduated from university and am no longer enrolled. Even while there, I didn't really have any experience finding and reading research papers written by others.

Is there an online database where people post their papers so that others can download to read?

Looking for a list of these databases/websites. Paid is okay too.

Update After reading the comments and answers below, I'd like to add that I am looking for research papers in the Computer Science / Computer Engineering / Electrical Engineering fields, and that I have graduated a few years ago from an undergraduate Computer Science program. I have not attended graduate school nor pursued a PhD.

• publications
• research-process
• paper-submission
• software-papers

• 4 It's a shame that this question is downvoted. It may seem to be completely obvious for academics, for lay persons maybe not so much. –  user115896 Nov 13, 2019 at 21:33
• 3 But the question is also exceedingly unspecific: It doesn't even list a particular field. –  Wolfgang Bangerth Nov 14, 2019 at 2:07
• After reading the comments and answers below, I'd like to add that I am looking for research papers in the Computer Science / Computer Engineering / Electrical Engineering fields, and that I have graduated a few years ago from an undergraduate Computer Science program. I have not attended graduate school nor pursued a PhD. –  chyeaaah Nov 14, 2019 at 16:06

5 Answers 5

This is going to depend a lot on your discipline. Some disciplines are very good at keeping papers and preprints publically available. For example, most math and physics papers get papers put up on the arXiv but this is rarer in other fields. Some other fields put papers up on SSRN , but some fields don't up up almost any preprints.

It isn't clear from your question if you've completed just your undergraduate or did some graduate work. Given your statement about not having looked at papers before, I'm guessing this mean that you have either finished just an undergrad or finished a master's but nothing beyond that. If that's the case, I'm also not sure that finding papers will in general be useful for you. It might help to clarify why you want to find papers and what your goals are.

Some journals give free access to articles after publication for limited time.

If you need older articles:

• google scholar crawls open copies and arXiv
• researchgate (ask directly the corresponding author for a copy)
• reddit/scholar

Read the according thesis if available, but often thesis are publicly published on university servers

• 1 It’s worth noting that downloading papers from sci-hub (usually) constitutes copyright violation. It’s unlikely that Elsevier is going to go after him for downloading things for personal use, but it might get him in trouble with his employer for violating their network usage policies if he did so at work. –  nick012000 Nov 15, 2019 at 1:21

You don't specify a location, but where I live, using my public library card (i.e. free membership to municipal library), I have access to thousands of journals from hundreds of publishers via the library's subscriptions from EBSCOhost and ProQuest aggregators.

These include several hundred journals under the subject heading Computer Science as well as several hundred under Engineering. My library's subscription includes only a handful of ACM and IEEE journals, so if you want those, your best bet is to go directly to the source. However, if you're looking for a broader selection of international academic journals, I recommend consulting your local library.

Another library suggestion, if the public library doesn't work for you, is to contact your alma mater to see whether there are any library services available to alumni.

There are a lot of paper databases out there you can use to find some papers to read:

• ACM: https://www.acm.org/
• arXiv: https://arxiv.org/
• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/
• IEEEXplorer: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/
• ScienceDirect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/
• ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/

But not all the retrieved papers from these services are freely available. If you have access to some University network, probably most of the paid papers will be unlocked for you. Most of the Universities around the world have agreements with major publishers.

If you are interested, I've made a tool to help me to find papers for my research https://github.com/jonatasgrosman/findpapers . You just need to write a query, and the tool will automatically search for matches on many databases for you :)

If you're confident that you know the foundations or you're willing to put in many hours to catch up, then kudos to you! Literature review is a grueling process and you're going to find that it's going to take you a while for you to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Since you specified that your background is in Comp Sci and Elec Eng, you'll find plenty of high quality papers in ieeeXplore and elsevier. If you do generalized searches like in google scholar, you may get mixed results since that pulls in papers from all over the google-space. But you can get lucky and it might be easier to start out from there.

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5 Best Places to Read Research Papers

Since I'm starting to read more and more research papers, I thought I'd give a small rundown on where I'm finding these papers. You can find a lot available for free, and the places below are my favorite ones to go to.

Arxiv (I believe it is pronounced "archive") is the most popular place to find research papers. There are several subsections but the ones to look at are machine learning and artificial intelligence . There is just so much you find here. In fact, there's so much there's an open source version of Arxiv called Arxiv Sanity .

Yep, the main place to find code is also a great place to find collections of research papers. Here are just a few of those collections to get you started.

Papers We Love

Papers We Love are a community of people who like to read computer science papers and then talk about what they have read. It's like a book club for computer science research. While this isn't solely for machine learning or AI there are some papers that touch on those fields.

Machine Learning Papers

While this repository isn't the most up-to-date having papers from NIPS in 2016, they do link out to the GitHub repositories so you can access the source code along with reading the paper.

Deep Learning Papers

This repository has quite a lot of papers in it. It has them broken down by category such as natural language process and reinforcement learning. This doesn't have just papers, either. There are some links to video lectures and other blogs you can go to as additional resources.

Quick tip if you want to find more more GitHub lists that are curated, there's a lot of people who have lists of topics under the awesome badge . Doing a search for github awesome and then what you're looking for will yield some interesting results.

Google Scholar

This is more of a search than a list of articles, but you can find a lot here. You can even create alerts on keywords or by researchers you want to follow to see what they are citing.

Machine Learning subreddit

Reddit is always a good place to find a community in topics that you're interesting in. Machine learning and sharing interesting papers has a place there as well.

While I'm on the data science subreddit a lot, the machine learning one is great for research, projects, and discussions. Often times, on the research posts, you'll get some extra context from the comments which can be more valulable than the paper itself.

Tech Company Sites

Some of the big tech companies have their own research entities, such as Google's Deep Mind , Microsoft Research , and Facebook Research . Often times, they'll publish their papers on their sites for anyone to access. Even better, sometimes they'll put out a blog post that highlights what a paper is about and will include some more feature rich graphics to go along with it that you can't always put into a research publication to help you understand what's going on in the paper.

Specific Journal Sites

There are some interesting journals that tailor specifically for publishing your work. Like ArXiv, all of the papers here are free to access. You have the Journal of Machine Learning Research which is specific to only machine learning topics. The Journal of Data Science which encompasses the huge field of data science, which you'll probably see a lot of statistics papers in here as well. And then there's the R Journal which has papers where the code was specifically written in R, so you may have more statistics topics in here, as well.

Hopefully, with these resources you'll be able to find research papers that will keep you busy for quite a long time.

Jonathan is a normal software developer residing in Columbia, SC. During the day he creates software using the Microsoft technology stack: by night he's doing martial arts or off learning and experiencing new things. He can also be found taking long walks around the parking lot or just sitting around reading.

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Ten simple rules for reading a scientific paper

Maureen a. carey.

Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health, Department of Medicine, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

Kevin L. Steiner

William a. petri, jr, introduction.

“There is no problem that a library card can't solve” according to author Eleanor Brown [ 1 ]. This advice is sound, probably for both life and science, but even the best tool (like the library) is most effective when accompanied by instructions and a basic understanding of how and when to use it.

For many budding scientists, the first day in a new lab setting often involves a stack of papers, an email full of links to pertinent articles, or some promise of a richer understanding so long as one reads enough of the scientific literature. However, the purpose and approach to reading a scientific article is unlike that of reading a news story, novel, or even a textbook and can initially seem unapproachable. Having good habits for reading scientific literature is key to setting oneself up for success, identifying new research questions, and filling in the gaps in one’s current understanding; developing these good habits is the first crucial step.

Advice typically centers around two main tips: read actively and read often. However, active reading, or reading with an intent to understand, is both a learned skill and a level of effort. Although there is no one best way to do this, we present 10 simple rules, relevant to novices and seasoned scientists alike, to teach our strategy for active reading based on our experience as readers and as mentors of undergraduate and graduate researchers, medical students, fellows, and early career faculty. Rules 1–5 are big picture recommendations. Rules 6–8 relate to philosophy of reading. Rules 9–10 guide the “now what?” questions one should ask after reading and how to integrate what was learned into one’s own science.

Rule 1: Pick your reading goal

What you want to get out of an article should influence your approach to reading it. Table 1 includes a handful of example intentions and how you might prioritize different parts of the same article differently based on your goals as a reader.

1 Yay! Welcome!

2 A journal club is when a group of scientists get together to discuss a paper. Usually one person leads the discussion and presents all of the data. The group discusses their own interpretations and the authors’ interpretation.

Rule 2: Understand the author’s goal

In written communication, the reader and the writer are equally important. Both influence the final outcome: in this case, your scientific understanding! After identifying your goal, think about the author’s goal for sharing this project. This will help you interpret the data and understand the author’s interpretation of the data. However, this requires some understanding of who the author(s) are (e.g., what are their scientific interests?), the scientific field in which they work (e.g., what techniques are available in this field?), and how this paper fits into the author’s research (e.g., is this work building on an author’s longstanding project or controversial idea?). This information may be hard to glean without experience and a history of reading. But don’t let this be a discouragement to starting the process; it is by the act of reading that this experience is gained!

A good step toward understanding the goal of the author(s) is to ask yourself: What kind of article is this? Journals publish different types of articles, including methods, review, commentary, resources, and research articles as well as other types that are specific to a particular journal or groups of journals. These article types have different formatting requirements and expectations for content. Knowing the article type will help guide your evaluation of the information presented. Is the article a methods paper, presenting a new technique? Is the article a review article, intended to summarize a field or problem? Is it a commentary, intended to take a stand on a controversy or give a big picture perspective on a problem? Is it a resource article, presenting a new tool or data set for others to use? Is it a research article, written to present new data and the authors’ interpretation of those data? The type of paper, and its intended purpose, will get you on your way to understanding the author’s goal.

Rule 3: Ask six questions

When reading, ask yourself: (1) What do the author(s) want to know (motivation)? (2) What did they do (approach/methods)? (3) Why was it done that way (context within the field)? (4) What do the results show (figures and data tables)? (5) How did the author(s) interpret the results (interpretation/discussion)? (6) What should be done next? (Regarding this last question, the author(s) may provide some suggestions in the discussion, but the key is to ask yourself what you think should come next.)

Each of these questions can and should be asked about the complete work as well as each table, figure, or experiment within the paper. Early on, it can take a long time to read one article front to back, and this can be intimidating. Break down your understanding of each section of the work with these questions to make the effort more manageable.

Rule 4: Unpack each figure and table

Scientists write original research papers primarily to present new data that may change or reinforce the collective knowledge of a field. Therefore, the most important parts of this type of scientific paper are the data. Some people like to scrutinize the figures and tables (including legends) before reading any of the “main text”: because all of the important information should be obtained through the data. Others prefer to read through the results section while sequentially examining the figures and tables as they are addressed in the text. There is no correct or incorrect approach: Try both to see what works best for you. The key is making sure that one understands the presented data and how it was obtained.

For each figure, work to understand each x- and y-axes, color scheme, statistical approach (if one was used), and why the particular plotting approach was used. For each table, identify what experimental groups and variables are presented. Identify what is shown and how the data were collected. This is typically summarized in the legend or caption but often requires digging deeper into the methods: Do not be afraid to refer back to the methods section frequently to ensure a full understanding of how the presented data were obtained. Again, ask the questions in Rule 3 for each figure or panel and conclude with articulating the “take home” message.

Rule 5: Understand the formatting intentions

Just like the overall intent of the article (discussed in Rule 2), the intent of each section within a research article can guide your interpretation. Some sections are intended to be written as objective descriptions of the data (i.e., the Results section), whereas other sections are intended to present the author’s interpretation of the data. Remember though that even “objective” sections are written by and, therefore, influenced by the authors interpretations. Check out Table 2 to understand the intent of each section of a research article. When reading a specific paper, you can also refer to the journal’s website to understand the formatting intentions. The “For Authors” section of a website will have some nitty gritty information that is less relevant for the reader (like word counts) but will also summarize what the journal editors expect in each section. This will help to familiarize you with the goal of each article section.

Research articles typically contain each of these sections, although sometimes the “results” and “discussion” sections (or “discussion” and “conclusion” sections) are merged into one section. Additional sections may be included, based on request of the journal or the author(s). Keep in mind: If it was included, someone thought it was important for you to read.

Rule 6: Be critical

Published papers are not truths etched in stone. Published papers in high impact journals are not truths etched in stone. Published papers by bigwigs in the field are not truths etched in stone. Published papers that seem to agree with your own hypothesis or data are not etched in stone. Published papers that seem to refute your hypothesis or data are not etched in stone.

Science is a never-ending work in progress, and it is essential that the reader pushes back against the author’s interpretation to test the strength of their conclusions. Everyone has their own perspective and may interpret the same data in different ways. Mistakes are sometimes published, but more often these apparent errors are due to other factors such as limitations of a methodology and other limits to generalizability (selection bias, unaddressed, or unappreciated confounders). When reading a paper, it is important to consider if these factors are pertinent.

Critical thinking is a tough skill to learn but ultimately boils down to evaluating data while minimizing biases. Ask yourself: Are there other, equally likely, explanations for what is observed? In addition to paying close attention to potential biases of the study or author(s), a reader should also be alert to one’s own preceding perspective (and biases). Take time to ask oneself: Do I find this paper compelling because it affirms something I already think (or wish) is true? Or am I discounting their findings because it differs from what I expect or from my own work?

The phenomenon of a self-fulfilling prophecy, or expectancy, is well studied in the psychology literature [ 2 ] and is why many studies are conducted in a “blinded” manner [ 3 ]. It refers to the idea that a person may assume something to be true and their resultant behavior aligns to make it true. In other words, as humans and scientists, we often find exactly what we are looking for. A scientist may only test their hypotheses and fail to evaluate alternative hypotheses; perhaps, a scientist may not be aware of alternative, less biased ways to test her or his hypothesis that are typically used in different fields. Individuals with different life, academic, and work experiences may think of several alternative hypotheses, all equally supported by the data.

Rule 7: Be kind

The author(s) are human too. So, whenever possible, give them the benefit of the doubt. An author may write a phrase differently than you would, forcing you to reread the sentence to understand it. Someone in your field may neglect to cite your paper because of a reference count limit. A figure panel may be misreferenced as Supplemental Fig 3E when it is obviously Supplemental Fig 4E. While these things may be frustrating, none are an indication that the quality of work is poor. Try to avoid letting these minor things influence your evaluation and interpretation of the work.

Similarly, if you intend to share your critique with others, be extra kind. An author (especially the lead author) may invest years of their time into a single paper. Hearing a kindly phrased critique can be difficult but constructive. Hearing a rude, brusque, or mean-spirited critique can be heartbreaking, especially for young scientists or those seeking to establish their place within a field and who may worry that they do not belong.

Rule 8: Be ready to go the extra mile

To truly understand a scientific work, you often will need to look up a term, dig into the supplemental materials, or read one or more of the cited references. This process takes time. Some advisors recommend reading an article three times: The first time, simply read without the pressure of understanding or critiquing the work. For the second time, aim to understand the paper. For the third read through, take notes.

Some people engage with a paper by printing it out and writing all over it. The reader might write question marks in the margins to mark parts (s)he wants to return to, circle unfamiliar terms (and then actually look them up!), highlight or underline important statements, and draw arrows linking figures and the corresponding interpretation in the discussion. Not everyone needs a paper copy to engage in the reading process but, whatever your version of “printing it out” is, do it.

Rule 9: Talk about it

Talking about an article in a journal club or more informal environment forces active reading and participation with the material. Studies show that teaching is one of the best ways to learn and that teachers learn the material even better as the teaching task becomes more complex [ 4 – 5 ]; anecdotally, such observations inspired the phrase “to teach is to learn twice.”

Beyond formal settings such as journal clubs, lab meetings, and academic classes, discuss papers with your peers, mentors, and colleagues in person or electronically. Twitter and other social media platforms have become excellent resources for discussing papers with other scientists, the public or your nonscientist friends, or even the paper’s author(s). Describing a paper can be done at multiple levels and your description can contain all of the scientific details, only the big picture summary, or perhaps the implications for the average person in your community. All of these descriptions will solidify your understanding, while highlighting gaps in your knowledge and informing those around you.

Rule 10: Build on it

One approach we like to use for communicating how we build on the scientific literature is by starting research presentations with an image depicting a wall of Lego bricks. Each brick is labeled with the reference for a paper, and the wall highlights the body of literature on which the work is built. We describe the work and conclusions of each paper represented by a labeled brick and discuss each brick and the wall as a whole. The top brick on the wall is left blank: We aspire to build on this work and label this brick with our own work. We then delve into our own research, discoveries, and the conclusions it inspires. We finish our presentations with the image of the Legos and summarize our presentation on that empty brick.

Whether you are reading an article to understand a new topic area or to move a research project forward, effective learning requires that you integrate knowledge from multiple sources (“click” those Lego bricks together) and build upwards. Leveraging published work will enable you to build a stronger and taller structure. The first row of bricks is more stable once a second row is assembled on top of it and so on and so forth. Moreover, the Lego construction will become taller and larger if you build upon the work of others, rather than using only your own bricks.

Build on the article you read by thinking about how it connects to ideas described in other papers and within own work, implementing a technique in your own research, or attempting to challenge or support the hypothesis of the author(s) with a more extensive literature review. Integrate the techniques and scientific conclusions learned from an article into your own research or perspective in the classroom or research lab. You may find that this process strengthens your understanding, leads you toward new and unexpected interests or research questions, or returns you back to the original article with new questions and critiques of the work. All of these experiences are part of the “active reading”: process and are signs of a successful reading experience.

In summary, practice these rules to learn how to read a scientific article, keeping in mind that this process will get easier (and faster) with experience. We are firm believers that an hour in the library will save a week at the bench; this diligent practice will ultimately make you both a more knowledgeable and productive scientist. As you develop the skills to read an article, try to also foster good reading and learning habits for yourself (recommendations here: [ 6 ] and [ 7 ], respectively) and in others. Good luck and happy reading!

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the mentors, teachers, and students who have shaped our thoughts on reading, learning, and what science is all about.

Funding Statement

MAC was supported by the PhRMA Foundation's Postdoctoral Fellowship in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics and the University of Virginia's Engineering-in-Medicine seed grant, and KLS was supported by the NIH T32 Global Biothreats Training Program at the University of Virginia (AI055432). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.