How To Read A Paper
One of the first papers I ever read was “How to Read a Paper” by S. Keshav. Here is my review for it.
You can find the link to that paper here
Reading is a skill, a skill that is rarely taught. Many people give up reading papers before they even start while others end up wasting a lot of time and effort. This paper explains in detail one of the many ways in which a research paper can be read.
The paper explains The Three-Pass Approach
For every paper you read, you must read it in the following manner:
1. The first pass
Read the title, abstract and introduction carefully.
Read the section and sub-section headings.
Read the conclusion.
Glance over the references.
[Time took: 5 to 10 min]
The first pass basically gives you an overview of the paper.
2. The second pass
Look at the figures, diagrams and other illustrations. See if there are any errors.
Mark relevant but unread references for further reading.
[Time took: Around 1 hour]
The second pass gives you a summary of the main thrust of the paper with supporting evidence.
3. The third pass
Virtually re-implement the paper by recreating the author’s work.
Compare your results with that of the paper to understand the paper’s innovation as well as its hidden features.
[Time took: 4 to 5 hours for beginners, 1 hour for an experienced reader]
The third pass enables you to identify and challenge every assumption in every statement of the paper. By the end of this pass, you should be able to reconstruct the entire structure of the paper from memory, as well as identify its strong and weak points.
There are many platforms that provide research papers.
Some of them are:
