How to Read a Research Paper

Seminar
“How to Read a Research paper”
Date: October27,2015
Venue: HS-O4
27-10-2015 1Email: ssoahmed@ssuet.edu.pk

How to Read a Paper
By syed sohail Ahmed
Assistant Professor
2email:ssoahmed@ssuet.edu.pk

Agenda
 Introduction
 Purpose of reading Research Paper
 Three -Pass Approach
 Resources for improving Reading
Research paper
 Book recommendation
 Conclusion

Introduction
 Researchers spend a great deal of time
reading research papers
 Selecting an appropriate research paper
is an art
 this skill is rarely taught, leading to much
wasted effort.

Purpose of reading Research
Paper
 Researchers read papers for several
reasons:
 Writing a research paper
 Presenting in a conference national or
international level
 For publication
 Update from current trend or to share in
class lecture

Three -Pass Approach
 The first Pass
 The Second pass
 The Third Pass

The First Pass
 The first pass gives you a general idea
about the paper
 This pass should take about five to ten
minutes and consists of the following
steps:
1. Carefully read the title, abstract, and
introduction
2. Read the section and sub-section
headings, but ignore everything else

Continue
3. Read the conclusions
4. Glance over the references, mentally
ticking off the ones you’ve already read

Continue:
 Now we learnt 5 C’S
Category:
What type of paper is this?
A measurement paper?
An analysis of an existing system? A
description of a research prototype?

Context
Context:
Which other papers is it related to?
Which theoretical bases were used to
analyze the problem?

Correctness:
Correctness:
Do the assumptions appear to be valid?

Contributions:
 Contributions:
What are the paper’s main contributions?

Cont:
 The first pass is adequate for papers that
aren’t in your research area, but may
someday prove relevant.
 Because “Reading is learning”

The second pass
 In the second pass, read the paper with
greater care
 Look carefully at
 figures, diagrams & illustrations
 Pay special attention to graphs. Are the
axes properly labeled?
 Are results shown with error bars?
 conclusions are statistically significant

Cont:
 Remember to mark relevant unread
references for further reading (this is a
good way to learn more about the
background of the paper).
 The second pass should take up to an
hour. After this pass
 you should be able to grasp the content
of the paper.

Cont:
 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.
 the authors may use a proof or
experimental technique that you don’t
understand, so that the bulk of the paper
is incomprehensible

 The paper may be poorly written with
unsubstantiated assertions and
numerous forward references.
 Or it could just be that it’s late at night
and you’re tired.

cont
 You can now choose to:
 (a) set the paper aside, hoping you don’t
need to understand the material to be
successful in your career,
 (b) return to the paper later, perhaps
after reading background material or
 (c) persevere and go on to third Pass

Third Pass
 This pass requires great attention to
detail.
 You should identify and challenge every
assumption in every statement.
 you should think about how you yourself
would present a particular idea

Cont:
 To fully understand a paper, particularly
if you are reviewer, requires a third pass.
The key to the third pass is to attempt to
virtually re-implement the paper:
 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.

 This pass requires great attention to
detail. You should identify and challenge
every assumption in every statement.
Moreover, you should think about how
you yourself would present a particular
idea

cont:
 This pass can take about four or five
hours for beginners, and about an hour
for an experienced reader. At the end of
this pass, you should be able to
reconstruct the entire structure of the
paper from memory, as well as be able
to identify its strong and weak points

Timing between Passes
 Andrew Simpson from Queen Mary
University of London writes: “the process
works best when there is quite a large
amount of time between each stage of
review. For example, I find that I often
collect large numbers of papers, read them
(10 minute rapid first review) and then
come back to them sometimes weeks later
for a second pass..”

Cont:
 Finally, some further weeks or months
later I return to them and find that I can
extract the final useful insight that I had
not done previously

REFERENCES
 [1] I.H. McLean, “Literature Review
Matrix,”
http://psychologyinc.blogspot.com/ [2] S.
Peyton Jones, “Research Skills,”
http://research.microsoft.com/enus/um/p
eople/simonpj/papers/giving-a-
talk/giving-atalk.htm. [3] T. Roscoe,
“Writing Reviews for Systems
Conferences,”

 http://people.inf.ethz.ch/troscoe/pubs/rev
iewwriting.pdf. [4] H. Schulzrinne,
“Writing Technical Articles,”
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/ hgs/etc/writ∼
ingstyle.html. [5] G.M. Whitesides,
“Whitesides’ Group: Writing a Paper,”
http://www.che.iitm.ac.in/misc/dd/writepa
per.pdf.

Acknowledged
 S. Keshav David R. Cheriton School of
Computer Science, University of
Waterloo Waterloo, ON, Canada
keshav@uwaterloo.ca

Do you have a schedule?
Organizing Your Day:
“Work smarter, not harder.”- Alan Lakein
 Set realistic goals, there are only 24 hours in a
day.
 Use spare time to review.
 Study at the same time each day: make it a
habit
 Divide study time into 50-minute blocks.
 Don’t forget to reward yourself when you do
something right!

Conclusion:
 Reading is learning: secure your future
and Earnings
 [ssahmed,2014]
email:ssoahmed@ssuet.edu.pk 29

Resources for Research
papers
 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/jo
urnal/10982140
 http://www.1millionpapers.com
 http://www.personal-writer.com/blog/7-
most-popular-types-of-research-papers

Review
 Time and energy management can make you more
productive and reduce your stress level.
 The Three Steps
 Set goals
 Make a schedule
 Revisit and revise your plan
 Be tough with your time. Actively avoid procrastination
and time wasters. Learn to say “no” to distractions.
 Employ a variety of time management strategies to
maximize your time.
 Relax and enjoy the extra time that you’ve discovered!

How to Read a Research Paper

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