tips for reading research papers

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• v.16(7); 2020 Jul

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.

How To Skim Read Journal Articles

Fast-Track Your Literature Review By Focusing On Three Sections

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | May 2020

If you’ve just started your literature review process, you’re probably sitting on a pile of scientific journal articles and research papers that are (1) lengthy and (2) written in very dense , academic language that is difficult to digest (at the best of times). It’s intimidating, for sure – and you’re probably wondering how on earth you’re going to get through it all.

You might be asking yourself some of these questions:

• Do I need to read every journal article to make sure I cover everything?
• Do I need to read every section of each article to understand it?
• If not, which sections should I focus on?

First things first, relax (I can feel your tension!). In this post, I’m going answer these questions and explain how to approach your review of the literature the smart way , so that you focus only on the most relevant literature and don’t waste time on low-value activities.

So, grab a nice hot cup of coffee (or tea, or whatever – just no beers) and let’s take a look at those questions, one at a time.

Question 1:

Do i need to read every journal article on my topic when doing my literature review.

The good news is that you don’t need to read every single journal article on your topic. Doing so would just be a waste of your time, as you’re generally looking to understand the current state of the literature – not the full history of it.

But… and this is an important but. You do need to read quite a bit to make sure that you have a comprehensive view of the current state of the literature (and of knowledge) in your area of research.

Quality trumps quantity when it comes to reviewing the literature. In other words, you need to focus on reading the journal articles that are most cited (i.e. that other academics have referenced) in relation to your topic keyword(s). You should focus on articles that are recent, relevant and well cited .

But how do I know if an article is well cited?

Thankfully, you can check the number of citations for any article really easily using Google Scholar . Just enter the article title in Google Scholar and it will show you how many citations it has – here’s an example:

In fact, Google Scholar is a great way to find the key journal articles for any keyword (topic) in general, so chances are you’ll be using this to find your journal articles in the first place. Therefore, be sure to keep an eye on citation count while you’re sourcing articles. It would also be smart to dedicate a column to it in your literature review catalogue (you can download one for free here ) so that you can quickly filter and sort by citation count.

A quick caveat – citation count is not a perfect metric for the quality of a journal article (unfortunately there is no unicorn metric that indicates quality). While its usually a good indicator of how popular an article is, it doesn’t mean the findings of the article are perfect (remember, the Kardashians are popular too – enough said). To the contrary, it could indicate that there’s a lot of controversy regarding the findings (sounds like the Kardashians again).

So, long story short – don’t be conned by citation count alone. Be sure to also pay attention the to quality of the journal each article is published in (you can check journal rank here ), and pay attention to what other articles say about any given popular article.

Need a helping hand?

Question 2:

Do i need to read the full journal journal article when doing my literature review.

Some more good news – no, you don’t need to read every single word in each journal article you review as part of your literature review. When you’re just starting your literature review, you need to get a big picture view of what each journal article is saying (in other words, the key questions and findings). Generally you can get a good feel for this by reading a few key sections in each article (we’ll get to these next).

That said (ah, there had to be a catch, right?), as you refine your literature review and establish more of a focus, you’ll need to dive deeper into the most important articles. Some articles will be central to your research – but you probably still don’t need to read them from first page to the last.

Question 3:

Which sections of each journal article should i read.

To get a big-picture view of what any article is all about, there are three sections that are very useful. These three sections generally explain both what the article is about (i.e. what questions they were trying to answer) and what the findings were (i.e. what their answers were). This is exactly what you’re looking for, so these three sections provide a great way for you to save time during your literature review.

So, let’s take a look at the three sections:

1 – The abstract (or executive summary)

The abstract (which is located right up front) provides a high-level overview of what the article is about. This is giving you the first little taste of the soup , so to speak. Generally, it will discuss what the research objectives were was and why they were important. This will give you a clear indication of how relevant the article is to your specific research, so pay close attention.

Sometimes the abstract will also discuss the findings of the article (much like a thesis abstract ), but this is not always the case (yeah, the abstract can be such a tease sometimes). If it does, it’s a bonus. But even so, you should still read the other sections, as the abstract only provides a very high-level view, and can miss out on specific nuances of the research.

2 – The introduction section

The introduction section will go into more detail about the topic being investigated and why this is important for the field of research. This will help you understand a bit more detail about what exactly they were investigating and in what context . Context is really important, so pay close attention to that.

For example, they might be investigating your exact topic, but in a country other than your own, or a different industry. In that case, you’d know that you need to pay very close attention to exactly how they undertook their research.

So, make sure you pay close attention to the introduction chapter to fully understand the focus of the research and the context in which it took place . Both will be important when it comes to writing your literature review, as you’ll need to use this information to build your arguments.

3 – The conclusion

While the introduction section tells you what the high-level questions the researchers asked, the conclusion section tells you what answers they found . This provides you with something of a shortcut to grasping the gist of the article, without reading all the dull and dry detail – yeah, it’s a little cheeky, I know. Of course, the conclusion is not going to highlight every nuance of the analysis findings, so if the article is highly relevant to your research, you should make sure to also pay close attention to the analysis findings section.

In addition to the findings of the research, the conclusion section will generally also highlight areas that require further research . In other words, they’ll outline areas that genuinely require further academic investigation (aka research gaps ). This is a gold mine for refining your topic into something highly original and well-rooted in the existing literature – just make sure that the article is recent, or someone else may have already exploited the research gap. If you’re still looking to identify a research topic, be sure to check out our video covering that here .

By reviewing these three sections of each article, you’ll save yourself a lot of time, while still getting a good understanding of what each article is saying. Keep in mind that as your literature review progresses, you focus will narrow and you’ll develop a set of core highly relevant articles, which you should sink your teeth into more deeply.

Let’s Recap

In this post, we looked at how to read academic journal articles quickly and efficiently, to save you many hours of pain while undertaking your literature review.

The key takeaways to remember are:

• You don’t need to read every single journal article covering your topic – focus on the most popular, authoritative and recent ones
• You don’t need to read every word of every article. To start, you just need to get a high-level understanding of the literature, which you can get by focusing on three key areas in each journal article.
• The three sections of each journal article to review are the abstract , the introduction and the conclusion .
• Once you’ve narrowed down your focus and have a core set of highly relevant, highly authoritative articles, you can dive deeper into them, paying closer attention to the methodology and analysis findings.

And there you have it – now go on and hammer through that pile of articles at warp speed. While you’re at it, why not also check out our other posts and videos covering research topic ideation , dissertation and thesis proposal , literature review , methodology , analysis and more.

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling Udemy Course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

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28 Comments

Thanks Derek for the tips

Reviewing the Literature can be overwhelming if you do not have the plan or the right structure to navigate the pool of information

You’re most welcome, Aletta. All the best with your literature review.

I personally have found these tips as a key to my long standing problem of reading articles. Thanks a million times

Simple and easy to read guidance… funny too

Great to hear that, Rishen 🙂

Much appreciated Derek. I already realized I could not read everything, but you confirming that has brought a lot of relief.

Great to hear that, Mazwakhe 🙂

Derek sir, I’m really happy for you.You made me to think very smart and effective way to do the review of literature.

Thank you so much.

Dear Derek, thank you for your easy and straight forward guidance,

Thanks for the interesting and informative article

You’re most welcome, Sanoon. Glad it was useful.

Thanks for the insights, I am about to start my literature review and this article as well as the other material from GradCoach will help me on the jorney.

You’re most welcome! Good luck writing your literature review

It was a great and effective information.

Thank you that was very helpful. I am taking a directed studies summer course, and I have to submit a literature review by end of August. That article was short, straight to the point and interesting 🙂 thank you Derek

You’re welcome, Emy 🙂 Good luck with your studies!

Thanks Derek. Reading this article has given me a boost because I have been so stock on how to go about my literature review.Though I know I am not meant to read the whole article.But your explanation has given me a greater insight.

Thank you very much sir for your great explanation 😄 Hopefully I’ve enough diligence and courage to start

You’re most welcome, Felicia. Good luck with your research.

thanks, it was helpful.

Thanks Derek for doing such a wonderful job of helping. Blessings Bro!

Concise and applicable, nice! what a great help. I am now doing a literature review section on my thesis, I used to waste so much time on reading articles that is not relevant back and forth.

Thank for your great help!

Hi Derek, i am busy with my research literature. I submited my 1st draft but it was way irrelevant as per comments made by my supervisor… i gave myself time to find out where i diverted until i lesson to some of your videos. As we speak now, i am starting following the guidelines and i feel confident that i am on the right track now. Thanks a lot my brother

You’re most welcome 🙂

I can’t explain my mood when I realised I had to study more than 40 articles about my study field. It was indeed a game-changer. Thank you very much, Derek. Also, Kardashian was the best example that can be used for this situation :)))

Thank you for posting this. It truly takes a load off! I’m new to Doctoral research and peer review study and “Overwhelmed” doesn’t quite sum up how I felt. This is a tremendous help!

Thank you for the advice. Question, how do one keep count of all the articles considered from starting point to narrowed down. Manually, or is there another way?

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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.

Web and Data Science Consultant | Instructional Design

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• 07 July 2022

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• Maya Gosztyla 0

Maya Gosztyla is a PhD student in biomedical sciences at the University of California, San Diego.

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“I’ll read that later,” I told myself as I added yet another paper to my 100+ open browser tabs.

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Reference management. Clean and simple.

How to read a scientific paper: a step-by-step guide

Scientific paper format

How to read a scientific paper in 3 steps, step 1: identify your motivations for reading a scientific paper, step 2: use selective reading to gain a high-level understanding of the scientific paper, step 3: read straight through to achieve a deep understanding of a scientific paper, frequently asked questions about reading a scientific paper efficiently, related articles.

A scientific paper is a complex document. Scientific papers are divided into multiple sections and frequently contain jargon and long sentences that make reading difficult. The process of reading a scientific paper to obtain information can often feel overwhelming for an early career researcher.

But the good news is that you can acquire the skill of efficiently reading a scientific paper, and you can learn how to painlessly obtain the information you need.

In this guide, we show you how to read a scientific paper step-by-step. You will learn:

• The scientific paper format
• How to identify your reasons for reading a scientific paper
• How to skim a paper
• How to achieve a deep understanding of a paper.

Using these steps for reading a scientific paper will help you:

• Obtain information efficiently
• Retain knowledge more effectively
• Allocate sufficient time to your reading task.

The steps below are the result of research into how scientists read scientific papers and our own experiences as scientists.

Firstly, how is a scientific paper structured?

The main sections are Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. In the table below, we describe the purpose of each component of a scientific paper.

Because the structured format of a scientific paper makes it easy to find the information you need, a common technique for reading a scientific paper is to cherry-pick sections and jump around the paper.

In a YouTube video, Dr. Amina Yonis shows this nonlinear practice for reading a scientific paper. She justifies her technique by stating that “By reading research papers like this, you are enabling yourself to have a disciplined approach, and it prevents yourself from drowning in the details before you even get a bird’s-eye view”.

Selective reading is a skill that can help you read faster and engage with the material presented. In his article on active vs. passive reading of scientific papers, cell biologist Tung-Tien Sun defines active reading as "reading with questions in mind" , searching for the answers, and focusing on the parts of the paper that answer your questions.

Therefore, reading a scientific paper from start to finish isn't always necessary to understand it. How you read the paper depends on what you need to learn. For example, oceanographer Ken Hughes suggests that you may read a scientific paper to gain awareness of a theory or field, or you may read to actively solve a problem in your research.

To successfully read a scientific paper, we advise using three strategies:

• Identify your motivations for reading a scientific paper
• Use selective reading to gain a high-level understanding of the scientific paper
• Read straight through to achieve a deep understanding of a scientific paper .

All 3 steps require you to think critically and have questions in mind.

Before you sit down to read a scientific paper, ask yourself these three questions:

• Why do I need to read this paper?
• What information am I looking for?
• Where in the paper am I most likely to find the information I need?

Is it background reading or a literature review for a research project you are currently working on? Are you getting into a new field of research? Do you wish to compare your results with the ones presented in the paper? Are you following an author’s work, and need to keep up-to-date on their current research? Are you keeping tabs on emerging methods in your field?

All of these intentions require a different reading approach.

For example, if you're delving into a new field of research, you'll want to read the introduction to gather background information and seminal references. The discussion section will also be important to understand the broader context of the findings.

If you aim to extend the work presented in a paper, and this study will be the starting point for your work, it's crucial to read the paper deeply.

If your focus is on the study design and techniques used by the authors, you'll spend most of your time reading and understanding the methods section.

Sometimes you'll need to read a paper to discuss it in your own research. This may be to compare or contrast your work with the paper's content, or to stimulate a discussion on future applications of your work.

If you are following an author’s work, a quick skim might suffice to understand how the paper fits into their overall research program.

Tip: Knowing why you want to read the paper facilitates how you will read the paper. Depending on your needs, your approach may take the form of a surface-level reading or a deep and thorough reading.

Knowing your motivations will guide your navigation through the paper because you have already identified which sections are most likely to contain the information you need. Approaching reading a paper in this way saves you time and makes the task less daunting.

➡️ Learn more about how to write a literature review

Begin by gaining an overview of the paper by following these simple steps:

• Read the title. What type of paper is it? Is it a journal article, a review, a methods paper, or a commentary?
• Read the abstract . The abstract is a summary of the study. What is the study about? What question was addressed? What methods were used? What did the authors find, and what are the key findings? What do the authors think are the implications of the work? Reading the abstract immediately tells you whether you should invest the time to read the paper fully.
• Look at the headings and subheadings, which describe the sections and subsections of the paper. The headings and subheadings outline the story of the paper.
• Skim the introduction. An introduction has a clear structure. The first paragraph is background information on the topic. If you are new to the field, you will read this closely, whereas an expert in that field will skim this section. The second component defines the gap in knowledge that the paper aims to address. What is unknown, and what research is needed? What problem needs to be solved? Here, you should find the questions that will be addressed by the study, and the goal of the research. The final paragraph summarizes how the authors address their research question, for example, what hypothesis will be tested, and what predictions the authors make. As you read, make a note of key references. By the end of the introduction, you should understand the goal of the research.
• Go to the results section, and study the figures and tables. These are the data—the meat of the study. Try to comprehend the data before reading the captions. After studying the data, read the captions. Do not expect to understand everything immediately. Remember, this is the result of many years of work. Make a note of what you do not understand. In your second reading, you will read more deeply.
• Skim the discussion. There are three components. The first part of the discussion summarizes what the authors have found, and what they think the implications of the work are. The second part discusses some (usually not all!) limitations of the study, and the final part is a concluding statement.
• Glance at the methods. Get a brief overview of the techniques used in the study. Depending on your reading goals, you may spend a lot of time on this section in subsequent readings, or a cursory reading may be sufficient.
• Summarize what the paper is about—its key take-home message—in a sentence or two. Ask yourself if you have got the information you need.
• List any terminology you may need to look up before reading the paper again.
• Scan the reference list. Make a note of papers you may need to read for background information before delving further into the paper.

Congratulations, you have completed the first reading! You now have gained a high-level perspective of the study, which will be enough for many research purposes.

Now that you have an overview of the work and you have identified what information you want to obtain, you are ready to understand the paper on a deeper level. Deep understanding is achieved in the second and subsequent readings with note-taking and active reflection. Here is a step-by-step guide.

• Active engagement with the material
• Critical thinking
• Creative thinking
• Synthesis of information
• Consolidation of information into memory.

Highlighting sentences helps you quickly scan the paper and be reminded of the key points, which is helpful when you return to the paper later.

Notes may include ideas, connections to other work, questions, comments, and references to follow up on.

There are many ways for taking notes on a paper. You can:

• Print out the paper, and write your notes in the margins.
• Annotate the paper PDF from your desktop computer, or mobile device .
• Use personal knowledge management software, like Notion , Obsidian, or Evernote, for note-taking. Notes are easy to find in a structured database and can be linked to each other.
• Use reference management tools to take notes. Having your notes stored with the scientific papers you’ve read has the benefit of keeping all your ideas in one place. Some reference managers, like Paperpile, allow you to add notes to your papers, and highlight key sentences on PDFs .

Note-taking facilitates critical thinking and helps you evaluate the evidence that the authors present. Ask yourself questions like:

• What new contribution has the study made to the literature?
• How have the authors interpreted the results? (Remember, the authors have thought about their results more deeply than anybody else.)
• What do I think the results mean?
• Are the findings well-supported?
• What factors might have affected the results, and have the authors addressed them?
• Are there alternative explanations for the results?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the study?
• What are the broader implications of the study?
• What should be done next?

Note-taking also encourages creative thinking . Ask yourself questions like:

• What new ideas have arisen from reading the paper?
• How does it connect with your work?
• What connections to other papers can you make?
• Write a summary of the paper in your own words. This is your attempt to integrate the new knowledge you have gained with what you already know from other sources and to consolidate that information into memory. You may find that you have to go back and re-read some sections to confirm some of the details.
• Discuss the paper with others. You may find that even at this stage, there are still aspects of the paper that you are striving to understand. It is now a good time to reach out to others—peers in your program, your advisor, or even on social media. In their 10 simple rules for reading a scientific paper , Maureen Carey and coauthors suggest that participating in journal clubs, where you meet with peers to discuss interesting or important scientific papers, is a great way to clarify your understanding.
• A scientific paper can be read over many days. According to research presented in the book " Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning " by writer Peter Brown and psychology professors Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, "spaced practice" is more effective for retaining information than focusing on a single skill or subject until it is mastered. This involves breaking up learning into separate periods of training or studying. Applying this research to reading a scientific paper suggests that spacing out your reading by breaking the work into separate reading sessions can help you better commit the information in a paper to memory.

A dense journal article may need many readings to be understood fully. It is useful to remember that many scientific papers result from years of hard work, and the expectation of achieving a thorough understanding in one sitting must be modified accordingly. But, the process of reading a scientific paper will get easier and faster with experience.

The best way to read a scientific paper depends on your needs. Before reading the paper, identify your motivations for reading a scientific paper, and pinpoint the information you need. This will help you decide between skimming the paper and reading the paper more thoroughly.

Don’t read the paper from beginning to end. Instead, be aware of the scientific paper format. Take note of the information you need before starting to read the paper. Then skim the paper, jumping to the appropriate sections in the paper, to get the information you require.

It varies. Skimming a scientific paper may take anywhere between 15 minutes to one hour. Reading a scientific paper to obtain a deep understanding may take anywhere between 1 and 6 hours. It is not uncommon to have to read a dense paper in chunks over numerous days.

First, read the introduction to understand the main thesis and findings of the paper. Pay attention to the last paragraph of the introduction, where you can find a high-level summary of the methods and results. Next, skim the paper by jumping to the results and discussion. Then carefully read the paper from start to finish, taking notes as you read. You will need more than one reading to fully understand a dense research paper.

To read a scientific paper critically, be an active reader. Take notes, highlight important sentences, and write down questions as you read. Study the data. Take care to evaluate the evidence presented in the paper.

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May 9th, 2016

How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists.

94 comments | 1962 shares

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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My post,  The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google  sparked a very lively discussion, with comments from several people trying to persuade me (and the other readers) that their paper disproved everything that I’d been saying. While I encourage you to go read the comments and contribute your own, here I want to focus on the much larger issue that this debate raised: what constitutes scientific authority?

It’s not just a fun academic problem. Getting the science wrong has very real consequences. For example, when a community doesn’t vaccinate children because they’re afraid of “toxins” and think that prayer (or diet, exercise, and “clean living”) is enough to prevent infection, outbreaks happen .

“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter

What constitutes enough proof? Obviously everyone has a different answer to that question. But to form a truly educated opinion on a scientific subject, you need to become familiar with current research in that field. And to do that, you have to read the “primary research literature” (often just called “the literature”). You might have tried to read scientific papers before and been frustrated by the dense, stilted writing and the unfamiliar jargon. I remember feeling this way!  Reading and understanding research papers is a skill which every single doctor and scientist has had to learn during graduate school.  You can learn it too, but like any skill it takes patience and practice.

I want to help people become more scientifically literate, so I wrote this guide for how a layperson can approach reading and understanding a scientific research paper. It’s appropriate for someone who has no background whatsoever in science or medicine, and based on the assumption that he or she is doing this for the purpose of getting a  basic understanding of a paper and deciding whether or not it’s a reputable study.

The type of scientific paper I’m discussing here is referred to as a primary research article . It’s a peer-reviewed report of new research on a specific question (or questions). Another useful type of publication is a review article . Review articles are also peer-reviewed, and don’t present new information, but summarize multiple primary research articles, to give a sense of the consensus, debates, and unanswered questions within a field.  (I’m not going to say much more about them here, but be cautious about which review articles you read. Remember that they are only a snapshot of the research at the time they are published.  A review article on, say, genome-wide association studies from 2001 is not going to be very informative in 2013. So much research has been done in the intervening years that the field has changed considerably).

Before you begin: some general advice

Reading a scientific paper is a completely different process than reading an article about science in a blog or newspaper. Not only do you read the sections in a different order than they’re presented, but you also have to take notes, read it multiple times, and probably go look up other papers for some of the details. Reading a single paper may take you a very long time at first. Be patient with yourself. The process will go much faster as you gain experience.

Most primary research papers will be divided into the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions/Interpretations/Discussion. The order will depend on which journal it’s published in. Some journals have additional files (called Supplementary Online Information) which contain important details of the research, but are published online instead of in the article itself (make sure you don’t skip these files).

Before you begin reading, take note of the authors and their institutional affiliations. Some institutions (e.g. University of Texas) are well-respected; others (e.g. the Discovery Institute ) may appear to be legitimate research institutions but are actually agenda-driven. Tip: g oogle “Discovery Institute” to see why you don’t want to use it as a scientific authority on evolutionary theory.

Also take note of the journal in which it’s published. Reputable (biomedical) journals will be indexed by Pubmed . [EDIT: Several people have reminded me that non-biomedical journals won’t be on Pubmed, and they’re absolutely correct! (thanks for catching that, I apologize for being sloppy here). Check out Web of Science for a more complete index of science journals. And please feel free to share other resources in the comments!]  Beware of questionable journals .

As you read, write down every single word that you don’t understand. You’re going to have to look them all up (yes, every one. I know it’s a total pain. But you won’t understand the paper if you don’t understand the vocabulary. Scientific words have extremely precise meanings).

Step-by-step instructions for reading a primary research article

1. Begin by reading the introduction, not the abstract.

The abstract is that dense first paragraph at the very beginning of a paper. In fact, that’s often the only part of a paper that many non-scientists read when they’re trying to build a scientific argument. (This is a terrible practice—don’t do it.).  When I’m choosing papers to read, I decide what’s relevant to my interests based on a combination of the title and abstract. But when I’ve got a collection of papers assembled for deep reading, I always read the abstract last. I do this because abstracts contain a succinct summary of the entire paper, and I’m concerned about inadvertently becoming biased by the authors’ interpretation of the results.

2. Identify the BIG QUESTION.

Not “What is this paper about”, but “What problem is this entire field trying to solve?”

This helps you focus on why this research is being done.  Look closely for evidence of agenda-motivated research.

3. Summarize the background in five sentences or less.

Here are some questions to guide you:

What work has been done before in this field to answer the BIG QUESTION? What are the limitations of that work? What, according to the authors, needs to be done next?

The five sentences part is a little arbitrary, but it forces you to be concise and really think about the context of this research. You need to be able to explain why this research has been done in order to understand it.

4. Identify the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)

What exactly are the authors trying to answer with their research? There may be multiple questions, or just one. Write them down.  If it’s the kind of research that tests one or more null hypotheses, identify it/them.

Not sure what a null hypothesis is? Go read this , then go back to my last post and read one of the papers that I linked to (like this one ) and try to identify the null hypotheses in it. Keep in mind that not every paper will test a null hypothesis.

5. Identify the approach

What are the authors going to do to answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)?

6. Now read the methods section. Draw a diagram for each experiment, showing exactly what the authors did.

I mean literally draw it. Include as much detail as you need to fully understand the work.  As an example, here is what I drew to sort out the methods for a paper I read today ( Battaglia et al. 2013: “The first peopling of South America: New evidence from Y-chromosome haplogroup Q” ). This is much less detail than you’d probably need, because it’s a paper in my specialty and I use these methods all the time.  But if you were reading this, and didn’t happen to know what “process data with reduced-median method using Network” means, you’d need to look that up.

Image credit: author

You don’t need to understand the methods in enough detail to replicate the experiment—that’s something reviewers have to do—but you’re not ready to move on to the results until you can explain the basics of the methods to someone else.

7. Read the results section. Write one or more paragraphs to summarize the results for each experiment, each figure, and each table. Don’t yet try to decide what the results mean , just write down what they are.

You’ll find that, particularly in good papers, the majority of the results are summarized in the figures and tables. Pay careful attention to them!  You may also need to go to the Supplementary Online Information file to find some of the results.

 It is at this point where difficulties can arise if statistical tests are employed in the paper and you don’t have enough of a background to understand them. I can’t teach you stats in this post, but here , here , and here are some basic resources to help you.  I STRONGLY advise you to become familiar with them.

Things to pay attention to in the results section:

• Any time the words “significant” or “non-significant” are used. These have precise statistical meanings. Read more about this here .
• If there are graphs, do they have error bars on them? For certain types of studies, a lack of confidence intervals is a major red flag.
• The sample size. Has the study been conducted on 10, or 10,000 people? (For some research purposes, a sample size of 10 is sufficient, but for most studies larger is better).

8. Do the results answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)? What do you think they mean?

Don’t move on until you have thought about this. It’s okay to change your mind in light of the authors’ interpretation—in fact you probably will if you’re still a beginner at this kind of analysis—but it’s a really good habit to start forming your own interpretations before you read those of others.

9. Read the conclusion/discussion/Interpretation section.

What do the authors think the results mean? Do you agree with them? Can you come up with any alternative way of interpreting them? Do the authors identify any weaknesses in their own study? Do you see any that the authors missed? (Don’t assume they’re infallible!) What do they propose to do as a next step? Do you agree with that?

10. Now, go back to the beginning and read the abstract.

Does it match what the authors said in the paper? Does it fit with your interpretation of the paper?

11. FINAL STEP: (Don’t neglect doing this) What do other researchers say about this paper?

Who are the (acknowledged or self-proclaimed) experts in this particular field? Do they have criticisms of the study that you haven’t thought of, or do they generally support it?

Here’s a place where I do recommend you use google! But do it last, so you are better prepared to think critically about what other people say.

(12. This step may be optional for you, depending on why you’re reading a particular paper. But for me, it’s critical! I go through the “Literature cited” section to see what other papers the authors cited. This allows me to better identify the important papers in a particular field, see if the authors cited my own papers (KIDDING!….mostly), and find sources of useful ideas or techniques.)

UPDATE: If you would like to see an example of how to read a science paper using this framework, you can find one here .

I gratefully acknowledge Professors José Bonner and Bill Saxton for teaching me how to critically read and analyze scientific papers using this method. I’m honored to have the chance to pass along what they taught me.

I’ve written a shorter version of this guide for teachers to hand out to their classes. If you’d like a PDF, shoot me an email: jenniferraff (at) utexas (dot) edu. For further comments and additional questions on this guide, please see the Comments Section on the original post .

This piece originally appeared on the author’s personal blog and is reposted with permission.

Featured image credit:  Scientists in a laboratory of the University of La Rioja  by Urcomunicacion  (Wikimedia CC BY3.0)

Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the LSE Impact blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our  Comments Policy  if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

About the Author

Jennifer Raff (Indiana University—dual Ph.D. in genetics and bioanthropology) is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas, director and Principal Investigator of the KU Laboratory of Human Population Genomics, and assistant director of KU’s Laboratory of Biological Anthropology. She is also a research affiliate with the University of Texas anthropological genetics laboratory. She is keenly interested in public outreach and scientific literacy, writing about topics in science and pseudoscience for her blog ( violentmetaphors.com ), the Huffington Post , and for the Social Evolution Forum .

About the author

94 Comments

Very good Indeed.I always Read Abstract First Time always ……Thanks

Great information and guide to reading and understanding scientific paper. However, there are non-scientific student asked to do scientific research and it would be great to actually give an example and you point out the answers to the steps in the sample article or journal cited. Thank you.

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I can summarize it eve further: three stars by a number in a table = good, no stars = bad

within the context of the fact that a very sizable portion of scientific papers are falsified, what does this article mean?

Your “fact” needs explanation and evidence, otherwise it can be considered alternative.

That’s why you don’t skip step 11

I think it would be useful also to point out that, even after diligently pursuing all of these excellent steps, the reader is usually still unable to determine whether the subjects or materials even existed. Unlike with lay media, where most important stories are covered by multiple sources, and where facts are sometimes checkable from primary sources – even by readers – it is rare indeed that a reader can go beyond the words on the page.

Is the fact that you read instructions on how to read a paper not evidence that there is something wrong with the way we write papers?

The issue of scientific literacy is always challenging for my students. But this is the most practical and helpful guide I’ve ever seen on the web, thanks for this. I usually share with my students the following tips already mentioned above: – Learn the vocabulary before reading – Summarize the background in five sentences or less – Identify the BIG QUESTION

But the pieces of advice this guide gives are structured better and easier. I especially love this one: Don’t yet try to decide what the results mean, just write down what they are. Thanks again for writing this piece!

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you left out ask for the data, so you can check for yourself… (ie trust but verify)

an example a psychology paper that surveyed a group of people about conspiracy theories (n=137) and it’s main/only novel finding was that people that believed in conspiracies theories, there was a tendency for people to believe in mutually contradictory conspiracy theories. ie individual could believe that Princess Diana faked her own death, whilst at the same time had been murdered by MI5

The paper, was duly called – Dead and Alive – M Wood et al…

However. after requesting the data. there was not a single individual person that ticked the survey boxes, that simultaneously believed this finding. Not one person.

The problem, most people surveyed did not believe either of those conspiracies, and inappropriate stats method was applied to data, that assumed a non skewed dataset. Thus, not believing in A and not believing in B correlated, but it also gave a ‘result that believing in A, and Believing in B also correlated..

A very dumb paper… Author still hasn’t retracted it yet.

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I love this! Great simmered-down resource for my undergrads- both science and non-science majors. Thanks for sharing!

“Web of Science” link is broken (at least for me) but a useable alternative is webofknowledge.com (same resource, different name).

I think it is important to note that the journal in which a paper is published is no proof as to the rigor of that paper. A listing in PubMed does not guarantee quality; thus, you need to focus on teaching people how to interpret the paper without relying on a simple JTASS approach to initial assessment. This may be a guide, but nothing more. I say this as a former editor of a MEDLINE journal. There can be good papers in bad journals and bad papers in good ones. But you are correct. Key questions are: What is the question? How will we answer the question? What answer did we get? Did we use the right tools to answer the question? What do we think it means? What else could we do? And thus we can train people to watch for sleights of hand, such as shifting primary outcomes, data mining, salami slicing, etc.

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Yikes! This is a lot of work just to read a single paper! It’s almost the same as writing a paper! I understand the logic in why you recommend this, but the average person is going to be willing to spend 20-30 minutes reading and trying to learn. This method calls for multiple hours of effort and I just don’t seem many non-scientist people being willing to do that when they’re more curious than actually invested. I was really hoping this entry was going to make it easier to navigate the foreign and confusing world that these papers represent, and it probably will if someone does this process repeatedly for quite some time…..like a scientist…..but most of us aren’t scientists and don’t have that kind of time to dedicate to something that’s not our work or family.

By tradition, we expect our scientists to report their findings by codifying them in unreadable gobbledygook. Then we write instructions on how to decode that unreadable nonsense!!

We need to encourage papers to be written in everyday language so it is easier for all. Problem solved.

I wholeheartedly agree with Kaveh Bazargan. From personal experience as a non-scientist trying to do this with medical research papers is a very intimidating and isolating experience. Most people don’t have the time spare to even try to learn this skill. It would be great if systematic reviewers who are acknowledged experts in reading and analysing papers could find a way of communicating the important information about individual papers to non-scientists before – or instead of – burying them in systematic reviews and meta-analyses which are even more difficult to understand. Structured plain language summaries of primary research would be very helpful rather than individuals having to teach themselves how to read and understand a scientific paper which is written for other scientists in “unreadable goggledygook”. Many (most?) papers conceal methodogical flaws in the research conduct which are almost impossible to spot without years of scientific training.

I love this! Extraordinary cooled off assets for my students both science and non-science majors. A debt of gratitude is in order for sharing!

Regarding step 11, if you have access to Web of Science I recommend looking up how many citations the paper has (this will also vary depending on the age of the paper) and who cites it, and whether there even any replies to it in the peer-reviewed literature.

Do you literally do this for every paper you read? I’m curious how much time it takes you to go from start to finish on what you would consider a typical paper. How often do you read new articles a week?

This post has the laudable goal of helping nonscientists understand the primary literature, but the recommendations seem even more onerous than they have to be. For example, the idea that one should write down every single word that he/she doesn’t know? That sounds more like a task for a scientist scrutinizing the work of a rival. For a nonscientist, there may be dozens and dozens of unknown words, and chasing down the meaning of each one may cause a serious forest/trees problem. I agree that there’s no substitute for the hard work of digging into a paper, but following the prescribed advice to the letter would be utterly exhausting for almost any lay reader. I base these comments on my experiences as a biology researcher and undergraduate instructor.

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I really like your post and the effort, but much of the problem wouldn’t exist if we, academics, did a better job in writing down the correct conclusions. Researcher degrees of freedom are seldom properly understood and we keep on having the tendency to be overdeterministic about statistics that are not intended as such. Of course we want to communicate in black and white about our tests (significance!) because it is a human tendency to persuade the reader. Most of the research probably is not as inconsistent as it first seems but we forget to report the proper statistics to see so (CI around the ES)

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Thank you very much for sharing a guide that will help me to follow the best standards for writing a scientific paper even I am not a scientist.

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Reading the abstract last is one, not the, way to read a paper. It it biases the naive reader, then they are not reviewing with a level of skepticism required to evaluate science. We put abstracts first because they lay out the problem, overview the sample and design, and tersely describe what they think they discovered. Then, as I read, I have a roadmap in my head of what to look for to determine for myself whether or not they found something noteworthy.

What is the problem? Are hypotheses to be tested likely to illuminate/clarify the problem? Is the sample appropriate for testing and was it sampled without imputing bias? Were measures appropriate and do they have a history of validity? We the analytics applied appropriate for testing at the level of power needed give the sample size? [Here even many scientist are ill-equipped to judge.] After enumerating results, do the authors list weaknesses in their design that might suggest replication is necessary? If not, check for snow – as in snowjob. If significance levelsare low or variables correlate with one another too much, are moderators discussed? [e.g., results hold for males but not females, old vs young, fat vs skinny, etc.). If so, why were data not re-analyzed to control for moderator effects on results?

Lastly, if the word “prove” appears anywhere in the paper, assume it is junk science (like fake news). Research is never ever done to prove anything. Research is only done to find out. Once a preponderance of studies report a similar finding looking at the same problem with different people, measures, designs, and statistical analyses, then you have something like proof; consensus.

Lastly, if you are a conspiracy theory believer, you will disbelieve any scientific study that does not support your word view. Keep this in mind. A few studies that run counter to the prevailing consensus is not PROOF that your conspiracy is correct, and mainstream science is wrong. I do not know a single scientist (and I know thousands globally) who do not consider climate change to be well-evidenced. Similarly, evolutionary theory remains useful – our current understanding of genomic medicine hinges on cellular mutation, which is evolution on a microscopic scale.

This is a very useful set of instructions, but I found the following statement highly amusing: “Before you begin reading, take note of the authors and their institutional affiliations. Some institutions (e.g. University of Texas) are well-respected; others (e.g. the Discovery Institute) may appear to be legitimate research institutions but are actually agenda-driven.”

All research institutions are agenda driven (including my alma mater, the University of Texas), because funding and professional advancement depend on results. Researchers are fallible humans and subject to temptation and error. There is a very big lawsuit pending against Duke University (see below) for falsifying data.

When I read any research (especially medical), I now search for evidence of legal or professional action. So you might add that as #12: “Lawsuits? Retractions?” Caveat lector.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6303/977.full

http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2016/09/experts-address-research-fabrication-lawsuit-against-duke-note-litigation-could-be-protracted

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Weird advice, like: ‘I always read the abstract last’ . This is advice for referees, not for general readers. I always read the abstract first.

An abstract can be misleading, but I am often not qualified enough to judge that. Actually, this blog post title and abstract are misleading too: your advice is for referees, not for non-scientists. So you wanted to provide an immersive experience into a misleading piece, well done 😉

First thing, get rid of the word proof. This is a huge error in that even if you have reputable scientists, journals, institutions, etc. that what is published, especially in a single article, is anything resembling a fact. It is merely research findings from one instance and in no way forms a fact. This is the next level of misinterpretation of science, even among those able to comprehend the journal article, that science produces or discovers facts. There is nothing that is factual that we know of.

Several comments:

For the mid-term exam in a graduate class I took in experimental design the professor would select half a dozen articles from the peer reviewed literature, tell her students to pick three and explain what they had done wrong. New articles for every class and she never ran out.

Beware of articles published in inappropriate journals, no matter how respectable (E.g., something about sociology or criminology published in a medical journal). This is a strategy for sneaking agenda driven research past the peer review process by going to a journal whose reviewers are likely to be unfamiliar with the subject while the editors are sympathetic to the agenda.

There is a reason research papers are written in what looks like “scientific gobbledygook” to lay persons. They are not intended for a lay audience and the goal is to be extremely precise with the technical details of what was done and found so other scientists can examine the results and, most important, attempt to replicate them.. There is no way to simplify the language and put it in lay terms without losing the precision required for a scientific study. E.g., a particle physicist may give a lay explanation of an experiment in metaphorical terms of little balls of energy smashing into each other, but their peers are going to want to see the pages and pages of mathematics that really describe what was happening.

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I would add “Check the source of funding for the research.” If paper on the safety of glyphosate is funded by Bayer or Monsanto, or a paper on climactic change is funded by Exxon, read no further.

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Get the dissertation writing service students look for these days with the prime focus being creating a well researched and lively content on any topic.

The non-scientist should pay extra attention towards this article for the non-technical writing and understanding for them.

A lot of a researcher’s work includes perusing research papers, regardless of whether it’s to remain progressive in their field, propel their logical comprehension, survey compositions, or assemble data for a task proposition or concede application. Since logical articles are not the same as different writings, similar to books or daily paper stories, they ought to be perused in an unexpected way.

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Thanks, I’ll use this a lot for my MSc Thesis.

Those are some great tips but please don’t forget that each school has its own requirements to academic papers.

Clarifying your methodology for reading science paper: excellent idea and great information. Thanks a lot!

Thanks for sharing this blog. Its very helpful for me and I bookmarked this for future

Excelente trabajo, original. Lo recomendaré para mis estudiantes de Posgrado. Si no hay problema, me gustaría hacer una traducción al castellano para el uso de mis estudiantes de pregrado de Sociología.

Excellent work,original. I will recommend it for my graduate students. If there is no problem, I would like to make a translation into Spanish for the use of my undergraduate Sociology students.

Hi Luis, all our works are CC licensed so you are more than welcome to make a translation provided you link back to the original source. See here for details: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_GB

Great information , it is very helpful thanks for sharing the blog .

Step 1 and 10 is a great idea, but I still think it’s possible to read the abstract with the introduction and still keep an open mind? and shouldn’t they keep their results for the interpretation section? sorry new to reading scientific papers

Step 1 and 10 is a great idea, but I still think it’s possible to read the abstract with the introduction and still keep an open mind? and shouldn’t they keep their results for the interpretation section? sorry new to reading scientific papers

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Thank you for sharing the tips, they were very helpful.

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The article is extremely helpful. Considering that scientific research are not as easy, the tips in the article are great.

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Thank you for posting this. It has really helped a lot, especially for those of us who always read the abstract first haha

Thanks for writing this blog. It is very much informative and at the same time useful for me

Yeah, great advice on how to be objective from someone who openly declares their prejudice in the opening statement.

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Do you in a real sense do this for each paper you read? I’m interested what amount of time it requires for you to go beginning to end on what you would think about an average paper. How frequently do you read new articles seven days?

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That is literally my question too, I see it as quite time consuming to conduct such a lengthy process for all scientific articles we come across especially as one has other responsibilities to give attention too

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There is a reason research papers are written in what looks like “scientific gobbledygook” to lay persons. They are not intended for a lay audience and the goal is to be extremely precise with the technical details of what was done and found so other scientists can examine the results and, most important, attempt o replicate them.

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Thanks for posting this. You are doing a service to the general public and also graduate students by not only posting this but answering all sincere questions. I have a Ph. D. in Zoology and have been a peer-reviewer for at least 12 papers and am first author of three peer-reviewed papers. I have taught statistics in two universities as a contract professor and all of my papers rely on use of statistics. To answer a frequently asked question, yes, personally it can take me a couple of hours or several more to read some papers. This is true for my colleagues as well. Scientific papers are written so as to be as concise as possible and this can make them hard to read. They often also use technical terms which one has to look up. At least biology and statistics. nothing I have read (or written) has been in “goobledygook” or purposely incomprehensible jargon but they do use terms and concepts that are probably unfamiliar to the layman. I think what the author means, by her comment on absstracts can be intepreted as “don’t JUST read the abstract. Be sure to read the introduction. Personally I go to the discussion and conclusion next.

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Your writing skills and passion for sharing your knowledge and experiences are truly outstanding. . Keep writing and inspiring others with your words.

I would add, look at who funded the study and their financial interests. Most science is not independent it is funded by those with an agenda. Look at the demographic data, length of time the study took place, what was left out, where you might need more information. Look at who was included and excluded in the data set. Anyone that has taken statistics knows what you include or exclude in the data set can skew and or outright change the outcome.

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How to read and understand a scientific paper

How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists, london school of economics and political science, jennifer raff.

From vaccinations to climate change, getting science wrong has very real consequences. But journal articles, a primary way science is communicated in academia, are a different format to newspaper articles or blogs and require a level of skill and undoubtedly a greater amount of patience. Here  Jennifer Raff   has prepared a helpful guide for non-scientists on how to read a scientific paper. These steps and tips will be useful to anyone interested in the presentation of scientific findings and raise important points for scientists to consider with their own writing practice.

My post,  The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google  sparked a very lively discussion, with comments from several people trying to persuade me (and the other readers) that  their  paper disproved everything that I’d been saying. While I encourage you to go read the comments and contribute your own, here I want to focus on the much larger issue that this debate raised: what constitutes scientific authority?

It’s not just a fun academic problem. Getting the science wrong has very real consequences. For example, when a community doesn’t vaccinate children because they’re afraid of “toxins” and think that prayer (or diet, exercise, and “clean living”) is enough to prevent infection, outbreaks happen.

“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter

What constitutes enough proof? Obviously everyone has a different answer to that question. But to form a truly educated opinion on a scientific subject, you need to become familiar with current research in that field. And to do that, you have to read the “primary research literature” (often just called “the literature”). You might have tried to read scientific papers before and been frustrated by the dense, stilted writing and the unfamiliar jargon. I remember feeling this way!  Reading and understanding research papers is a skill which every single doctor and scientist has had to learn during graduate school.  You can learn it too, but like any skill it takes patience and practice.

I want to help people become more scientifically literate, so I wrote this guide for how a layperson can approach reading and understanding a scientific research paper. It’s appropriate for someone who has no background whatsoever in science or medicine, and based on the assumption that he or she is doing this for the purpose of getting a  basic  understanding of a paper and deciding whether or not it’s a reputable study.

The type of scientific paper I’m discussing here is referred to as a  primary research article . It’s a peer-reviewed report of new research on a specific question (or questions). Another useful type of publication is a  review article . Review articles are also peer-reviewed, and don’t present new information, but summarize multiple primary research articles, to give a sense of the consensus, debates, and unanswered questions within a field.  (I’m not going to say much more about them here, but be cautious about which review articles you read. Remember that they are only a snapshot of the research at the time they are published.  A review article on, say, genome-wide association studies from 2001 is not going to be very informative in 2013. So much research has been done in the intervening years that the field has changed considerably).

Before you begin: some general advice

Reading a scientific paper is a completely different process than reading an article about science in a blog or newspaper. Not only do you read the sections in a different order than they’re presented, but you also have to take notes, read it multiple times, and probably go look up other papers for some of the details. Reading a single paper may take you a very long time at first. Be patient with yourself. The process will go much faster as you gain experience.

Most primary research papers will be divided into the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions/Interpretations/Discussion. The order will depend on which journal it’s published in. Some journals have additional files (called Supplementary Online Information) which contain important details of the research, but are published online instead of in the article itself (make sure you don’t skip these files).

Before you begin reading, take note of the authors and their institutional affiliations. Some institutions (e.g. University of Texas) are well-respected; others (e.g.  the Discovery Institute ) may appear to be legitimate research institutions but are actually agenda-driven.  Tip:  g oogle  “Discovery Institute” to see why you don’t want to use it as a scientific authority on evolutionary theory.

Also take note of the journal in which it’s published. Reputable (biomedical) journals will be indexed by  Pubmed . [EDIT: Several people have reminded me that non-biomedical journals won’t be on Pubmed, and they’re absolutely correct! (thanks for catching that, I apologize for being sloppy here). Check out  Web of Science  for a more complete index of science journals. And please feel free to share other resources in the comments!]  Beware of  questionable journals .

As you read, write down  every single word  that you don’t understand. You’re going to have to look them all up (yes, every one. I know it’s a total pain. But you won’t understand the paper if you don’t understand the vocabulary. Scientific words have extremely precise meanings).

Step-by-step instructions for reading a primary research article

1. Begin by reading the introduction, not the abstract.

The abstract is that dense first paragraph at the very beginning of a paper. In fact, that’s often the only part of a paper that many non-scientists read when they’re trying to build a scientific argument. (This is a terrible practice—don’t do it.).  When I’m choosing papers to read, I decide what’s relevant to my interests based on a combination of the title and abstract. But when I’ve got a collection of papers assembled for deep reading, I always read the abstract last. I do this because abstracts contain a succinct summary of the entire paper, and I’m concerned about inadvertently becoming biased by the authors’ interpretation of the results.

2. Identify the BIG QUESTION.

Not “What is this paper about”, but “What problem is this entire field trying to solve?”

This helps you focus on why this research is being done.  Look closely for evidence of agenda-motivated research.

3. Summarize the background in five sentences or less.

Here are some questions to guide you:

What work has been done before in this field to answer the BIG QUESTION? What are the limitations of that work? What, according to the authors, needs to be done next?

The five sentences part is a little arbitrary, but it forces you to be concise and really think about the context of this research. You need to be able to explain why this research has been done in order to understand it.

4.   Identify the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)

What  exactly  are the authors trying to answer with their research? There may be multiple questions, or just one. Write them down.  If it’s the kind of research that tests one or more null hypotheses, identify it/them.

Not sure what a null hypothesis is? Go read this one  and try to identify the null hypotheses in it. Keep in mind that not every paper will test a null hypothesis.

5. Identify the approach

What are the authors going to do to answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)?

6. Now read the methods section. Draw a diagram for each experiment, showing exactly what the authors did.

I mean  literally  draw it. Include as much detail as you need to fully understand the work.  As an example, here is what I drew to sort out the methods for a paper I read today ( Battaglia et al. 2013: “The first peopling of South America: New evidence from Y-chromosome haplogroup Q” ). This is much less detail than you’d probably need, because it’s a paper in my specialty and I use these methods all the time.  But if you were reading this, and didn’t happen to know what “process data with reduced-median method using Network” means, you’d need to look that up.

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 Effectively Read Scientific Papers

The busy schedule of a clinician or researcher typically leaves little time for reading the latest issue of Nature. However, staying abreast of current developments in your research field by reading scientific articles is essential for planning future research projects. It is important to know what has already been done and which questions remain unanswered. Furthermore, reading the work of others can inspire new directions in your own research. In addition, for clinicians, the published literature provides critical insights into the optimal treatments for patients.

Why is Effective Reading Important?

However, simply reading scientific articles is not enough; we need to read them effectively . This means that we have to understand what we have read. Scientific papers are usually dense with information and can be particularly hard to fathom if English is not your first language. Furthermore, the scientific literature is expanding exponentially, so finding relevant articles is getting more challenging. To navigate this endless sea of information and read papers effectively, it is necessary to be aware of the different types of journal articles and how they are structured. An original research report presents novel research findings. Review articles present and discuss the results of previous studies. Review articles have a different structure, but original articles are generally divided into five main sections after the title: Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion. Each of these sections serves a specific purpose:

• The Abstract is a summary of the article, and briefly outlines the background, objectives, approach, findings, and conclusions of the study.
• The Introduction explains everything that the reader needs to know to understand the purpose of the study and emphasizes the central question.
• The Methods section describes all the experimental procedures in enough detail so that the reader can repeat them.
• The Results section presents the study findings in the form of figures and description in the main text.
• The Discussion interprets the research findings in relation to the published literature. It typically finishes by emphasizing how the study findings contribute to the research field. In some cases, the Discussion is followed by a separate Conclusions section.

Tips for Getting Started

Firstly, make sure the article interests you. Take a look at the title and keywords . These should communicate the main topic and message of the work and tell you whether the paper is relevant or not. Then, read the Abstract to get a complete overview of the paper’s contents and find out whether you want to keep reading.

Scientific papers should not be read from beginning to end. Instead, skim through the article first, focusing on the sub-headings of the Results section and final paragraph of the Discussion to get a brief overview of the main manuscript contents. Then, re-read the individual sections in detail.

If you are unfamiliar with the topic, then start with the Introduction to get the necessary background information. Once you understand why the research has been performed, move to the Results section and examine the figures. Try to interpret them for yourself, and then compare your interpretations with the legends and main text. Making notes and highlighting important sentences is a useful way to keep track of the key messages.

Active Reading is More Effective

Once you start reading, remember that it needs to be an active process to be effective. This means that you need to be critical and question yourself continuously while you read. In addition, you can ask the following questions:

• Do I understand all the terminologies? Do I need to do some background reading to help me understand?
• Can I explain the research question and why it is important?
• Can I summarize the methods and the main findings?
• Does the author’s interpretation persuade me?
• Is the research credible? Is the journal trust worthy?

Effective Reading, Your Way

When it comes to reading research papers, different scientists have different approaches . In this article, we have explained that reading scientific articles from the beginning to end is not effective. Skimming the paper, then re-reading specific sections is more effective. When it comes to re-reading different sections, there is no right or wrong order. After the Abstract, some prefer to read the Introduction to gain the background knowledge necessary to interpret the results. Others prefer to go straight to the figures for an in-depth look at the Results, while others are satisfied to read the interpretations presented in the Discussion. This will depend on the reader’s own knowledge of the subject, and the reasons for reading the paper in the first place. The main goal is to find a way that works best for you.

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Your Guide to Reading Scientific Papers

Share this:.

Scientific papers, also called research papers or journal articles, are a way for scientists to communicate knowledge publicly. Because researchers often write these papers to share their work with others in that field, they aren’t always easy for non-scientists to understand.

But finding and reading scientific papers is easier than you might think! Part III of our Demystifying Clinical Trials series will teach you how you to find, read, understand, and think critically about scientific papers.

Journals, Articles, and How to Find Them

A journal is a periodical that regularly publishes a collection of scientific articles. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine publishes articles on general medical topics, Nature publishes on general science, the American Journal of Cardiology focuses specifically on cardiology, and many other journals publish on cancer, pediatrics, etc. Many journals require a subscription, but most also provide articles for free after a few months. (For more on the process of how articles are written and accepted for publication, you can read our earlier blog post here .)

The American Association for Cancer Research has a great review of the most common sites to search for journal articles. These sites, along with Google Scholar , allow easy searching by keyword, disease, author, title, or journal. In addition to these sites, many doctors have profile pages on their hospital’s or clinic’s website that include a list of their recent publications. This is often provided as a citation list , which is a standard format listing the author’s names, year of publication, title, journal of publication for each article. Information from the citation can be used to find a paper on one of the common journal article search websites .

Parts of a paper

Newspapers have the same regularly occurring sections in the same order (major news, local, sports, weather, etc.). Similarly, scientific papers also have the same regular sections in the same order to ensure that information is presented consistently across all journals. Most scientific papers have the following sections:

• Title and authors: The general focus of the paper, who wrote it, and where they work
• Abstract: Spoiler alert – this is an executive summary of the entire paper, including the findings and conclusion. Abstracts are always provided for free to help readers determine if they want to keep reading (or possibly pay for) the whole article.
• Introduction/Background: Reviews previous research, why this study was done, and the hypotheses the researchers had before starting.
• Methods: Explains how the research was done. This section includes details on the sample (animals, humans, adults, kids, etc.), size of the sample, new drug or treatment procedures, data collected, and more. The section is very detailed so that other scientists can replicate the study to confirm the findings, and so people know exactly what was done in case there are questions.
• Results: Extremely detailed scientific results. This section presents information on data analysis, technical facts and figures, and usually presents large amounts of statistical results in tables and graphs.
• Discussion/Conclusion: This is the reader-friendly explanation of the results section. It also usually includes discussion of any weaknesses or limitations of the study and ideas for future research.
• References/Bibliography: The citation list of previous research that informed this paper.

Most papers also include tables, graphs, and figures (pictures) to visually share important information. Journal articles are strictly limited to only a few thousand words – and a picture is worth a thousand words! In addition, it’s often easier for readers to see a picture demonstrating something like umbilical cord blood collection than to read several paragraphs and try to imagine the process.

How to Read a Scientific Journal Article

There are three main reasons people read scientific papers: 1) interest in a particular topic, 2) to gain information needed for treating patients, or 3) to inform new scientific research. With so many papers being published in so many places now, even professionals can use tips on how to efficiently read journal articles. The best suggestion comes from Dr. Subramanyam (2013) : The cardinal rule when reading papers is: Never start reading an article from the beginning to the end. It’s better to begin by identifying the conclusions of the study by reading the title and abstract.… After reading the abstract and conclusions, if the reader deems it interesting or useful, then the entire article can be read. Journal articles are not novels that must be read from start to finish. Start by reading the abstract to get an overview of the sample, what was done in the study, and what the researchers learned at the end. Then, if you want to know more or still have questions, you can read the Introduction and Discussion sections. (The Methods and Results section share extremely technical data that is most useful to other scientists in that field.)

Thinking Critically about Journal Articles

As important as knowing the sections and how to read them is thinking critically about the paper you’re reading. The article may have been peer-reviewed by experts, but there are still important questions to keep in mind.

For instance, think about the sample. How many people did the researchers collect data on? Is the paper reviewing data from thousands of people across multiple countries, or only a few patients from one hospital? Where were they from? When was the data collected (e.g., recently or more than five years ago)? If the topic or condition is rare there will be fewer people available to collect data on, but looking at the sample size is always key when thinking about the bigger picture.

Another question to keep in mind is whether the authors discussed limitations to their study. All research has strengths and weaknesses, and the authors themselves should point out not only what might have hampered their work, but also how future research can resolve the problem. Additionally, most journals require authors to submit financial disclosure statements on how the study was funded and whether or not the authors receive money from an organization that presents a conflict of interest in their work.

The HLHS Program Presents – #ResearchRecap

Finding and reading scientific papers isn’t as overwhelming, or time-consuming, as it used to be. The internet now makes it easy for scientists share their work, and for the public to find and compare results from many different studies. There’s also a new movement among scientists to better communicate their work to the public in ways that are easy to understand. Many researchers now share their work and even answer questions from the public on their social media pages.

The Todd and Karen Wanek Family Program for HLHS fully supports this initiative and is excited to announce a new regularly-occurring series – #ResearchRecap! Beginning in September, our blog and social media pages will regularly provide a brief, reader-friendly overview of new scientific papers on HLHS or related congenital heart defects. We’ll try to include papers that are available to read for free, but will always bring you the most recent and most exciting research being published. Stay tuned!

The Todd and Karen Wanek Family Program for Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS) is a collaborative network of specialists bonded by the vision of finding solutions for individuals affected by congenital heart defects including HLHS. Our specialized team is addressing the various aspects of these defects by using research and clinical strategies ranging from basic science to diagnostic imaging to regenerative therapies.   Email us at [email protected] to learn more.

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Open Access

Ten simple rules for reading a scientific paper

* E-mail: [email protected]

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

• Maureen A. Carey, 
• Kevin L. Steiner, 
• William A. Petri Jr

Published: July 30, 2020

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008032
• Reader Comments

Citation: Carey MA, Steiner KL, Petri WA Jr (2020) Ten simple rules for reading a scientific paper. PLoS Comput Biol 16(7): e1008032. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008032

Editor: Scott Markel, Dassault Systemes BIOVIA, UNITED STATES

Copyright: © 2020 Carey et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: 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.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008032.t001

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.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008032.t002

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.

• 1. Brown E. The Weird Sisters. G. P. Putnam’s Sons; 2011.
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• USC Libraries
• Research Guides

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• Reading Research Effectively
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Research Process Video Series
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Generative AI and Writing
• USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
• Bibliography

Reading a Scholarly Article or Research Paper

Identifying a research problem to investigate usually requires a preliminary search for and critical review of the literature in order to gain an understanding about how scholars have examined a topic. Scholars rarely structure research studies in a way that can be followed like a story; they are complex and detail-intensive and often written in a descriptive and conclusive narrative form. However, in the social and behavioral sciences, journal articles and stand-alone research reports are generally organized in a consistent format that makes it easier to compare and contrast studies and to interpret their contents.

General Reading Strategies

W hen you first read an article or research paper, focus on asking specific questions about each section. This strategy can help with overall comprehension and with understanding how the content relates [or does not relate] to the problem you want to investigate. As you review more and more studies, the process of understanding and critically evaluating the research will become easier because the content of what you review will begin to coalescence around common themes and patterns of analysis. Below are recommendations on how to read each section of a research paper effectively. Note that the sections to read are out of order from how you will find them organized in a journal article or research paper.

1.  Abstract

The abstract summarizes the background, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions of a scholarly article or research paper. Use the abstract to filter out sources that may have appeared useful when you began searching for information but, in reality, are not relevant. Questions to consider when reading the abstract are:

• Is this study related to my question or area of research?
• What is this study about and why is it being done ?
• What is the working hypothesis or underlying thesis?
• What is the primary finding of the study?
• Are there words or terminology that I can use to either narrow or broaden the parameters of my search for more information?

2.  Introduction

If, after reading the abstract, you believe the paper may be useful, focus on examining the research problem and identifying the questions the author is trying to address. This information is usually located within the first few paragraphs of the introduction or in the concluding paragraph. Look for information about how and in what way this relates to what you are investigating. In addition to the research problem, the introduction should provide the main argument and theoretical framework of the study and, in the last paragraphs of the introduction, describe what the author(s) intend to accomplish. Questions to consider when reading the introduction include:

• What is this study trying to prove or disprove?
• What is the author(s) trying to test or demonstrate?
• What do we already know about this topic and what gaps does this study try to fill or contribute a new understanding to the research problem?
• Why should I care about what is being investigated?
• Will this study tell me anything new related to the research problem I am investigating?

3.  Literature Review

The literature review describes and critically evaluates what is already known about a topic. Read the literature review to obtain a big picture perspective about how the topic has been studied and to begin the process of seeing where your potential study fits within the domain of prior research. Questions to consider when reading the literature review include:

• W hat other research has been conducted about this topic and what are the main themes that have emerged?
• What does prior research reveal about what is already known about the topic and what remains to be discovered?
• What have been the most important past findings about the research problem?
• How has prior research led the author(s) to conduct this particular study?
• Is there any prior research that is unique or groundbreaking?
• Are there any studies I could use as a model for designing and organizing my own study?

4.  Discussion/Conclusion

The discussion and conclusion are usually the last two sections of text in a scholarly article or research report. They reveal how the author(s) interpreted the findings of their research and presented recommendations or courses of action based on those findings. Often in the conclusion, the author(s) highlight recommendations for further research that can be used to develop your own study. Questions to consider when reading the discussion and conclusion sections include:

• What is the overall meaning of the study and why is this important? [i.e., how have the author(s) addressed the " So What? " question].
• What do you find to be the most important ways that the findings have been interpreted?
• What are the weaknesses in their argument?
• Do you believe conclusions about the significance of the study and its findings are valid?
• What limitations of the study do the author(s) describe and how might this help formulate my own research?
• Does the conclusion contain any recommendations for future research?

5.  Methods/Methodology

The methods section describes the materials, techniques, and procedures for gathering information used to examine the research problem. If what you have read so far closely supports your understanding of the topic, then move on to examining how the author(s) gathered information during the research process. Questions to consider when reading the methods section include:

• Did the study use qualitative [based on interviews, observations, content analysis], quantitative [based on statistical analysis], or a mixed-methods approach to examining the research problem?
• What was the type of information or data used?
• Could this method of analysis be repeated and can I adopt the same approach?
• Is enough information available to repeat the study or should new data be found to expand or improve understanding of the research problem?

6.  Results

After reading the above sections, you should have a clear understanding of the general findings of the study. Therefore, read the results section to identify how key findings were discussed in relation to the research problem. If any non-textual elements [e.g., graphs, charts, tables, etc.] are confusing, focus on the explanations about them in the text. Questions to consider when reading the results section include:

• W hat did the author(s) find and how did they find it?
• Does the author(s) highlight any findings as most significant?
• Are the results presented in a factual and unbiased way?
• Does the analysis of results in the discussion section agree with how the results are presented?
• Is all the data present and did the author(s) adequately address gaps?
• What conclusions do you formulate from this data and does it match with the author's conclusions?

7.  References

The references list the sources used by the author(s) to document what prior research and information was used when conducting the study. After reviewing the article or research paper, use the references to identify additional sources of information on the topic and to examine critically how these sources supported the overall research agenda. Questions to consider when reading the references include:

• Do the sources cited by the author(s) reflect a diversity of disciplinary viewpoints, i.e., are the sources all from a particular field of study or do the sources reflect multiple areas of study?
• Are there any unique or interesting sources that could be incorporated into my study?
• What other authors are respected in this field, i.e., who has multiple works cited or is cited most often by others?
• What other research should I review to clarify any remaining issues or that I need more information about?

NOTE :  A final strategy in reviewing research is to copy and paste the title of the source [journal article, book, research report] into Google Scholar . If it appears, look for a "cited by" followed by a hyperlinked number [e.g., Cited by 45]. This number indicates how many times the study has been subsequently cited in other, more recently published works. This strategy, known as citation tracking, can be an effective means of expanding your review of pertinent literature based on a study you have found useful and how scholars have cited it. The same strategies described above can be applied to reading articles you find in the list of cited by references.

Reading Tip

Specific Reading Strategies

Effectively reading scholarly research is an acquired skill that involves attention to detail and an ability to comprehend complex ideas, data, and theoretical concepts in a way that applies logically to the research problem you are investigating. Here are some specific reading strategies to consider.

As You are Reading

• Focus on information that is most relevant to the research problem; skim over the other parts.
• As noted above, read content out of order! This isn't a novel; you want to start with the spoiler to quickly assess the relevance of the study.
• Think critically about what you read and seek to build your own arguments; not everything may be entirely valid, examined effectively, or thoroughly investigated.
• Look up the definitions of unfamiliar words, concepts, or terminology. A good scholarly source is Credo Reference .

Taking notes as you read will save time when you go back to examine your sources. Here are some suggestions:

• Mark or highlight important text as you read [e.g., you can use the highlight text  feature in a PDF document]
• Take notes in the margins [e.g., Adobe Reader offers pop-up sticky notes].
• Highlight important quotations; consider using different colors to differentiate between quotes and other types of important text.
• Summarize key points about the study at the end of the paper. To save time, these can be in the form of a concise bulleted list of statements [e.g., intro has provides historical background; lit review has important sources; good conclusions].

Write down thoughts that come to mind that may help clarify your understanding of the research problem. Here are some examples of questions to ask yourself:

• Do I understand all of the terminology and key concepts?
• Do I understand the parts of this study most relevant to my topic?
• What specific problem does the research address and why is it important?
• Are there any issues or perspectives the author(s) did not consider?
• Do I have any reason to question the validity or reliability of this research?
• How do the findings relate to my research interests and to other works which I have read?

Adapted from text originally created by Holly Burt, Behavioral Sciences Librarian, USC Libraries, April 2018.

Another Reading Tip

When is it Important to Read the Entire Article or Research Paper

Laubepin argues, "Very few articles in a field are so important that every word needs to be read carefully." However, this implies that some studies are worth reading carefully. As painful and time-consuming as it may seem, there are valid reasons for reading a study in its entirety from beginning to end. Here are some examples:

• Studies Published Very Recently .  The author(s) of a recent, well written study will provide a survey of the most important or impactful prior research in the literature review section. This can establish an understanding of how scholars in the past addressed the research problem. In addition, the most recently published sources will highlight what is currently known and what gaps in understanding currently exist about a topic, usually in the form of the need for further research in the conclusion .
• Surveys of the Research Problem .  Some papers provide a comprehensive analytical overview of the research problem. Reading this type of study can help you understand underlying issues and discover why scholars have chosen to investigate the topic. This is particularly important if the study was published very recently because the author(s) should cite all or most of the key prior research on the topic. Note that, if it is a long-standing problem, there may be studies that specifically review the literature to identify gaps that remain. These studies often include the word review in their title [e.g., Hügel, Stephan, and Anna R. Davies. "Public Participation, Engagement, and Climate Change Adaptation: A Review of the Research Literature." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 11 (July-August 2020): https://doi.org/10.1002/ wcc.645].
• Highly Cited .  If you keep coming across the same citation to a study while you are reviewing the literature, this implies it was foundational in establishing an understanding of the research problem or the study had a significant impact within the literature [positive or negative]. Carefully reading a highly cited source can help you understand how the topic emerged and motivated scholars to further investigate the problem. It also could be a study you need to cite as foundational in your own paper to demonstrate to the reader that you understand the roots of the problem.
• Historical Overview .  Knowing the historical background of a research problem may not be the focus of your analysis. Nevertheless, carefully reading a study that provides a thorough description and analysis of the history behind an event, issue, or phenomenon can add important context to understanding the topic and what aspect of the problem you may want to examine further.
• Innovative Methodological Design .  Some studies are significant and worth reading in their entirety because the author(s) designed a unique or innovative approach to researching the problem. This may justify reading the entire study because it can motivate you to think creatively about pursuing an alternative or non-traditional approach to examining your topic of interest. These types of studies are generally easy to identify because they are often cited in others works because of their unique approach to studying the research problem.
• Cross-disciplinary Approach .  R eviewing studies produced outside of your discipline is an essential component of investigating research problems in the social and behavioral sciences. Consider reading a study that was conducted by author(s) based in a different discipline [e.g., an anthropologist studying political cultures; a study of hiring practices in companies published in a sociology journal]. This approach can generate a new understanding or a unique perspective about the topic . If you are not sure how to search for studies published in a discipline outside of your major or of the course you are taking, contact a librarian for assistance.

Laubepin, Frederique. How to Read (and Understand) a Social Science Journal Article . Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ISPSR), 2013; Shon, Phillip Chong Ho. How to Read Journal Articles in the Social Sciences: A Very Practical Guide for Students . 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015; Lockhart, Tara, and Mary Soliday. "The Critical Place of Reading in Writing Transfer (and Beyond): A Report of Student Experiences." Pedagogy 16 (2016): 23-37; Maguire, Moira, Ann Everitt Reynolds, and Brid Delahunt. "Reading to Be: The Role of Academic Reading in Emergent Academic and Professional Student Identities." Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice 17 (2020): 5-12.

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Home → Academic Reading → How to Read Research Papers Like a Boss

How to Read Research Papers Like a Boss

Jordan Kruszynski

• May 5, 2023

Reading research papers can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be that way. With a few tips and tricks, you can quickly become a master of this critical academic skill. In this article, we’ll give you an introduction to research papers, take a look at how to read them, and best of all, show you how to optimise your research paper-reading experience. So, let’s get started!

What are Research Papers and Why Do They Matter?

Research papers are scientific documents that report on the results of a research project or study. They are typically published in academic journals and are written by authors who are experts in their field.

Research papers can range from short reports to lengthy documents. They usually include an abstract (a short summary of the paper), an introduction, a methodology section, results, discussion, and a conclusion. They also often include figures, tables, and references to other research papers.

The purpose of research papers is to present new findings and add to the ever-growing body of scientific literature. As such, they are an important part of the scientific process. Research papers can also be a great source of information for students, scientists, and researchers.

Simply put, if you want to keep on top of the latest developments in your field, then you need to be reading a lot of papers.

How to Read Research Papers

Reading research papers can seem daunting at first, but with a few tips and tricks, you can quickly become a master at it. Here are some tips for reading research papers:

• Start with the abstract. This is a short summary of the paper, so it will give you a good overview of what the paper is about.
• Read the introduction. This will give you a better understanding of the context of the paper and the research question.
• Look at the figures and tables . These can help you quickly understand the data and results.
• Check the methodology section. This will give you a better understanding of the research methods used.
• Study the results and discussion sections. This will give you a better understanding of the findings and implications of the study.
• Finish with the conclusion. This will wrap everything up and give you the final thrust of the paper.

Looking for help with the fundamentals? Audemic automatically breaks down any paper into the sections we set out above , making your reading experience elegant, intuitive and organized.

Analysing Research Papers

Reading research papers is not just about understanding the content, it’s also about analysing the paper. When you analyse a research paper, you should look at the structure, argument, and evidence presented.

When analysing the structure of a research paper, pay attention to the introduction, methodology section, and conclusion. Are the sections well-structured and organised? How does the author present their argument? Does the paper address the research question?

When analysing the argument, look for evidence to support the author’s claims. Are the claims supported by research? Are there any logical flaws in the argument?

Finally, pay attention to the evidence presented in the paper. Are the sources reliable and up-to-date? Does the author use data to support their claims? Do they provide enough evidence to support their argument?

Understanding Research Paper Terminology

Research papers are full of technical terms and jargon. To be able to read them effectively, you need to understand the terminology.

For example, a research paper may use terms like “hypothesis”, “data collection”, “experiment”, “control group”, “sample size” and “statistical analysis”. To understand these terms, you need to have a basic understanding of scientific research.

It’s also important to understand the terminology used in the field of study. For instance, if you’re reading a research paper on computer science, you need to understand terms like “algorithm”, “data structure”, and “programming language”.

If you don’t understand something, the answer is simple – look it up!

Strategies for Reading Research Papers

Working out how to read research papers can seem overwhelming, especially when you’re a beginner. That’s why it’s important to have a plan. Here are some strategies for reading research papers:

• Set aside a specific amount of time for reading . This can help you focus and stay on track.
• Read the abstract first. This will give you an overview of what the paper is about.
• Skim the paper. This can help you get a better understanding of the content.
• Read the introduction and conclusion. This will give you a better understanding of the paper’s argument.
• Take notes as you read. This can help you remember important points.

Psst! Did you know you can easily take notes as you go when you read papers with Audemic? Don’t believe us? Give it a try!

• Ask questions. If you don’t understand something, don’t be afraid to ask.
• Connect the paper to other research. This can help you gain a better understanding of the paper.

Tips for Extracting Information from Research Papers

Reading research papers is not just about understanding the content, it’s also about extracting information. To do this effectively, you need to know how to identify and analyse the key points.

Here are some tips for extracting information from research papers:

• Read the abstract. This will give you an overview of the paper.
• Absorb the introduction and conclusion. This will give you a better understanding of the paper’s argument.
• Scan for key facts and figures. These can be helpful for quickly understanding the paper.
• Consider how learning styles affect the way you take in information from a paper. Audio or visual learner? You’ll love the way Audemic organises papers to make them oh-so-digestible.
• Scrutinise the methodology section. This will give you an understanding of the research methods used.
• Analyse the results and discussion sections. This will help you understand the implications of the study.
• Look for connections between the paper and other research. This will help you gain a better understanding of the paper.

Final Thoughts

Well, there you have it. Reading research papers can seem intimidating and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be that way. With a few tips and tricks, you can quickly learn how to read research papers like a boss. It’s all about breaking down those walls of information into smaller pieces and extracting the gems of knowledge hidden within.

Luckily for you, Audemic makes this whole process easier – we do the hard work so you can get to the heart of a paper more quickly than ever before .  Listen at your leisure and organise your thoughts – and your day – like a boss.

Keep striving, researchers! ✨

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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: Reading Research Effectively

• Purpose of Guide
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• The Research Problem/Question
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Evaluating Sources
• Reading Research Effectively
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Is it Peer-Reviewed?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism [linked guide]
• Annotated Bibliography
• Grading Someone Else's Paper

Reading a Scholarly Article or Research Paper

Reading Research Publications Effectively

It's easy to feel overwhelmed and frustrated when first reading a scholarly article or research paper. The text is dense and complex and often includes abstract or convoluted language . In addition, the terminology may be confusing or applied in a way that is unfamiliar. To help overcome these challenges w hen you first read an article or research paper, focus on asking specific questions about each section. This strategy can help with overall comprehension and understanding how the content relates [or does not relate] to the research problem you are investigating. This approach will also help identify key themes as you read additional studies on the same topic. As you review more and more studies about your topic, the process of understanding and critically evaluating the research will become easier because the content of what you review will begin to coalescence around common themes and patterns of analysis.

Think about the following in this general order:

1.  Read the Abstract

An abstract summarizes the basic content of a scholarly article or research paper. Questions to consider when reading the abstract are: What is this article about? What is the working hypothesis or thesis? Is this related to my question or area of research? The abstract can be used to help filter out sources that may have appeared useful when you began searching for information but, in reality, are not relevant.

2.  Identify the Research Problem and Underlying Questions? 

If, after reading the abstract, you believe the paper may be useful, focus on examining the research problem and identifying the questions the author is trying to address. Look for information that is relevant to your research problem and make note of how and in what way this information relates to what you are investigating.

3.  Read the Introduction and Discussion/Conclusion

The introduction provides the main argument and theoretical framework of the article. Questions to consider for the introduction include what do we already know about this topic and what is left to discover? What other research has been conducted about this topic? How is this research unique? Will this study tell me anything new related to the research problem I am investigating?

Questions to ask yourself while reading the discussion and conclusion sections include what does the study mean and why is it important? What are the weaknesses in their argument? Does the conclusion contain any recommendations for future research and do you believe conclusions about the significance of the study and its findings are valid?

4.  Read about the Methods/Methodology

If what you have read so far closely relates to your research problem, then move on to reading about how the author(s) gathered information for their research. Questions to consider include how did the author do the research? Was it a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods project? What data is the study based on? Could I repeat their work and is all the information available to repeat the study?

5.  Read about the Results and Analysis

Next, read the outcome the research and how it was discussed and analyzed. If any non-textual elements [e.g., graphs, charts, tables, etc.] are confusing, focus on the explanations about them in the text. Questions to consider are what did the author find and how did they find it? Are the results presented in a factual and unbiased way? Does their analysis of results agree with the data presented? Is all the data present? What conclusions do you formulate from this data and does it match with the author's conclusions?

6.  Review the References

The list of references, or works cited, shows you the basis of prior research used by the author(s) to support their study. The references can be an effective way to identify additional sources of information on the topic. Questions to ask include what other research studies should I review? What other authors are respected in this field, i.e., who is cited most often by others? What other research should be explored to learn about issues I am unclear or need more information about?

Reading Tips

Preparing to Read a Scholarly Article or Research Paper for the First Time

Reading scholarly publications effectively is an acquired skill that involves attention to detail and the ability to comprehend complex ideas, data, and concepts in a way that applies logically to the research problem you are investigating. Here are some strategies to consider.

While You are Reading

• Focus on information in the publication that is most relevant to the research problem
• Think critically about what you read and seek to build your own arguments; not everything is 100% true or examined effectively
• Read out of order! This isn't a novel or movie; you want to start with the spoiler
• Look up the definitions of words you don't know as you read

There are any number of ways to take notes as you read, but use the method that you feel most comfortable with. Taking notes as you read will save time when you go back to examine your sources. Below are some suggestions:

• Print the article and highlight, circle, and/or underline text as you read [or, you can use the highlight text   feature in a PDF document]
• Take notes in the margins [Adobe Reader offers pop-up sticky notes]
• Focus on highlighting important quotes; consider using a different color to differentiate between quotes and other types of text you want to return to when writing
• Quickly summarize the main or key points at the end of the paper

As you read, write down questions that come to mind that relate to or may clarify your research problem. Here are a few questions that might be helpful:

• Have I taken time to understand all the terminology?
• Am I spending too much time on the less important parts of this article?
• Are there any issues that the authors did not consider?
• Do I have any reason to question the credibility of this research?
• What specific problem does the research address and why is it important?
• How do these results relate to my research interests or to other works which I have read?

Adapted from text originally created by Holly Burt, USC Libraries, April 2018. Thank you, Holly!

• << Previous: Evaluating Sources
• Next: Primary Sources >>
• Last Updated: Sep 8, 2023 12:19 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.txstate.edu/socialscienceresearch

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Here's how to set your reading goals and read more books in 2024

Mansee Khurana

Even if you're someone who reads regularly, it can be hard to keep up your reading goals. Jackie Lay /NPR hide caption

Even if you're someone who reads regularly, it can be hard to keep up your reading goals.

Trying to read more can be a hard habit to stick to – even if you're someone who regularly reads a lot.

Just ask Nadia Odunayo, the founder and CEO of The StoryGraph, a book recommendation website with over a million users. Odunayo said that when she started The Storygraph in 2019, reading more felt like an essential goal.

"It felt like it very much became part of my identity as a reader, " Odunayo told Morning Edition . "Like, I run a books company, I need to make sure I'm reading."

In a few years, Odunayo went from reading 13 books a year to well over 70.

While she feels like that's a realistic goal for her, it's not an achievable goal for everybody.

Odunayo says setting realistic expectations about how many books you want to read can be the key to success. But making sure you pick the right a mount of books to read in a year can be tricky.

"It was a combination of making the time, but also being excited about a lot more books, " Odunayo said.

Why it's OK to judge a book by its cover (and more tips on how to find a great read)

A Economist/YouGov poll found that 46% of Americans finished zero books last year and 5% read just one last year. Out of the 1,500 American's surveyed in the poll, only 21% read more than ten books.

With March being National Reading Month – it is a good time to think about revisit your reading goals from the beginning of the year. Whether you've just gotten into reading, or you're churning through multiple books a week, here's some tips to keep in mind as you're setting your reading goals.

Expand your reading horizons by thinking about what types of books you're reading. Jackie Lay /NPR hide caption

Expand your reading horizons by thinking about what types of books you're reading.

Think genres, not numbers

Reading goals don't always have to be numerical. Goals such as wanting to read books from more diverse authors or reading more of a specific genre can be better than just focusing on a number. Brea Grant, one of the hosts of the podcast Reading Glasses , says she realized she didn't want to set a number goal when she found herself reading books she didn't like, or finishing books just for the sake of hitting a number.

"That's not fun because that's going to eventually turn you off from reading," Grant said.

Here are the Books We Love: 380+ great 2023 reads recommended by NPR

Sites like The StoryGraph features reading challenges that users can participate in to expand their reading habits. One challenge recommends books from 10 different countries for users who want to read from more diverse authors.

You can also create your own goals. If you're an avid fantasy romance reader, for example, you may want to see how many science fiction books you can incorporate into your reading habit.

Sometimes, it can be as simple as reading books on a topic you're interested in. Grant, a filmmaker, decided that this year that she wanted to read more books about filmmaking.

"I didn't go to film school, and I realized that I haven't even read that many books about filmmaking, even though I've been a filmmaker for so many years," Grant said. "So I think that focusing on reading more books about my craft is a better goal than a specific number of books."

Reading might seem like a solitary hobby, but it doesn't have to be! Jackie Lay /NPR hide caption

Reading might seem like a solitary hobby, but it doesn't have to be!

Find more ways to make reading a community affair

Reading can often seem like a solitary hobby, but it doesn't have to be.

Check your local area for book clubs and reading-related events. Or find someone to talk to about books – and you don't even have to ask about what they are currently reading. You can ask them about their favorite book, or the book that impacted their life the most.

"That's another way that people can show that they're bookish without necessarily being like 'I read 400 books this year'," Mallory O' Meara, who hosts the Reading Glasses podcast with Grant, said.

If you'd rather get lost in a book alone, O'Meara says you might enjoy finding new spots to read in your city. It might feel intimidating going into a coffee shop or bar alone, but it can be a fun way to explore your neighborhood while doing something you love.

How to start a book club: Tips and reading suggestions

"We really encourage people to make it an activity," Grant said. "Get a cozy blanket, get a cup of tea, something that you look forward to at the end of the day."

Whatever you prefer, Grant says it's always important to remember why you want to read more, and not get too caught up in feeling like you have to read a certain number of books.

"Reading is a hobby, and you want to get the maximum enjoyment out of it," Grant said.

Don't be afraid to adjust your goal

At the beginning of the year, it's easy to set high expectations of yourselves. You think you can workout everyday, or read a book every week. But as the year goes on, you might want to adjust that number to a goal you know you can reach.

"There's a lot of things we won't achieve in life," Grant said. "Make reading something you know you can get done."

Finding that perfect number can be hard.You want something that challenges you, but doesn't feel unrealistic. Additionally, life can get in the way. These challenges could include large work projects or family obligations that you didn't anticipate at the beginning of the year.

Pop Culture Happy Hour

How to get the most out of your library.

Suzanne Skyvara, who leads marketing at Goodreads, a book recommendation site where over six million users participate in its annual reading challenge, recommends adjusting your number later in the year if you need, and encourages not to think of changing your goal as "failing."

"If you're finding that you've set the goal too high in the middle of the year and it's becoming demotivating you can bring it down, which re-energizes me and gets me back on track," Skyvara said.

After all, reading should be a hobby, not homework.

"The goal should always be to enjoy your reading life more," O' Meara said. "To read more books that you either love or teach you something or you connect with in some way."

Correction March 28, 2024

This article was updated to fix the amount of Goodreads users particpating in the the site's annual reading challenge.

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How To Write A Research Paper

Find Sources For A Research Paper

How to Find Sources For a Research Paper | A Guide

10 min read

Published on: Mar 26, 2024

Last updated on: Mar 25, 2024

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Research papers are an essential part of academic life, but one of the most challenging aspects can be finding credible sources to support your arguments. 

With the vast amount of information available online, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. However, by following some simple steps, you can streamline the process of finding reliable sources for your research paper . 

In this guide, we'll break down the process into easy-to-follow steps to help you find the best sources for your paper.

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Step 1: Define Your Topic and Research Questions

Before you venture into your quest for sources, it's essential to have a clear understanding of your research topic and the specific questions you aim to address. Define the scope of your paper and identify keywords and key concepts that will guide your search for relevant sources.

Step 2: Utilize Academic Databases

Academic databases are treasure troves of scholarly articles, research papers, and academic journals covering a wide range of subjects. Institutions often provide access to these databases through their libraries. Some popular academic databases include:

• IEEE Xplore
• Google Scholar

These databases allow you to search for peer-reviewed articles and academic papers related to your topic. 

Use advanced search features to narrow down your results based on publication date, author, and keywords .

Academic Resources Classified by Discipline

Here's a breakdown of prominent databases categorized by academic discipline:

Step 3: Explore Library Catalogs

Your university or local library's catalog is another valuable resource for finding sources. Library catalogs contain books, periodicals, and other materials that may not be available online. 

Use the catalog's search function to locate relevant books, journals, and other materials that can contribute to your research.

Step 4: Consult Bibliographies and References

When you find a relevant source, take note of its bibliography or make a list of sources for the research paper. These lists often contain citations to other works that may be useful for your research. 

By exploring the references cited in a particular source, you can uncover additional resources and expand your understanding of the topic.

Step 5: Boolean Operators for Effective Searches

Boolean operators are words or symbols used to refine search queries by defining the relationships between search terms. The three primary operators include "AND," which narrows searches by requiring all terms to be present; "OR," which broadens searches by including either term or both; and "NOT," which excludes specific terms to refine results further. 

Most databases provide advanced search features for seamless application of Boolean logic.

Step 6: Consider Primary Sources 

Depending on your research topic, primary sources such as interviews, surveys, archival documents, and original data sets can provide valuable insights and support for your arguments. 

Primary sources offer firsthand accounts and original perspectives on historical events, social phenomena, and scientific discoveries.

Step 7: Evaluate the Credibility of Sources

Not all sources are created equal, and it's crucial to evaluate the credibility and reliability of the information you encounter. 

Consider the author's credentials, the publication venue, and whether the source is peer-reviewed. Look for evidence of bias or conflicts of interest that may undermine the source's credibility.

Step 8: Keep Track of Your Sources

As you gather sources for your research paper, maintain a systematic record of the materials you consult.  Keep track of bibliographic information, including author names, publication dates, titles, and page numbers . This information will be invaluable when citing your sources and creating a bibliography or works cited page.

Other Online Sources

In addition to academic databases and library catalogs, exploring popular online sources can provide valuable insights and perspectives on your research topic.  Here are some types of online sources you can consider:

Websites hosted by reputable organizations, institutions, and experts (such as the New York Times) can offer valuable information and analysis on a wide range of topics. Look for websites belonging to universities, research institutions, government agencies, and established non-profit organizations.

Crowdsourced Encyclopedias like Wikipedia

While Wikipedia can provide a broad overview of a topic and lead you to other sources, it's essential to verify the information found there with more authoritative sources. 

Use Wikipedia as a starting point for your research, but rely on peer-reviewed journal articles and academic sources for in-depth analysis and evidence.

Tips for Assessing the Credibility of Online Sources

When using online sources, it's important to exercise caution and critically evaluate the credibility and reliability of the information you find. Here are some tips for assessing the credibility of online sources:

• Check the Domain Extension: Look for websites with domain extensions that indicate credibility. URLs ending in .edu are educational resources, while URLs ending in .gov are government-related resources. These sites often provide reliable and authoritative information.
• Look for DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers): DOIs are unique alphanumeric strings assigned to scholarly articles and indicate that the article has been published in a peer-reviewed, scientific journal. Finding a DOI can help you assess the scholarly rigor of the source.
• Evaluate the Authorship and Credentials: Consider the qualifications and expertise of the author or organization behind the website or blog. Look for information about the author's credentials, affiliations, and expertise in the subject matter.
• Consider the Currency and Relevance: Assess how up-to-date the information is and whether it aligns with the scope and focus of your research. Look for recent publications and timely analyses that reflect current trends and developments in the field.

Wrapping it up!

Finding sources for your research paper may seem like a challenge, but by following these steps, you can locate credible sources to support your arguments and enhance the quality of your paper. 

By approaching the research process systematically and critically evaluating the information you encounter, you can produce a well-researched and compelling research paper.

If you are struggling with finding credible sources or have time constraints, do not hesitate to seek writing help for your research papers . CollegeEssay.org has professional writers ready to assist you. 

Connect with our essay writing service now and receive expert guidance and support to elevate your research paper to the next level.

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Study finds 3 big risk factors for dementia

Diabetes, air pollution and alcohol consumption could be the biggest risk factors for dementia, a study has found.

Researchers compared modifiable risk factors for dementia — which is characterized by the impairment of memory, thinking and reasoning — and studied how these factors appear to affect certain brain regions that are already particularly vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

The research, based on brain scans of nearly 40,000 adults, between ages 44 and 82, in Britain was published Wednesday in Nature Communications.

These vulnerable regions of the brain develop during adolescence and help the brain process and integrate “bits of information across different modalities, across different senses,” said Gwenaëlle Douaud , an associate professor at the University of Oxford and co-author of the study. But “they’re the first ones to go when we start aging.”

“What we’re trying to do is say: What are the common risk factors for dementia that are affecting these regions?” Douaud said. “These are the three most harmful but then, obviously, the others, they have an effect.”

• Researchers investigated the genetic and modifiable risk factors that contribute to the vulnerability of the “most fragile parts of the brain” by studying the brain scans of nearly 40,000 relatively healthy participants from the U.K. Biobank.
• The study examined 161 modifiable risk factors, including blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, weight, alcohol consumption, smoking, mood, inflammation, pollution, hearing, sleep, socialization, diet, physical activity and education.
• A diagnosis of diabetes, the amount of nitrogen dioxide in the air and how often someone drinks alcohol — from never to daily, or nearly every day — were found to be the three most detrimental risk factors to these regions of the brain, Douaud said.
• Diabetes, air pollution and alcohol consumption each has an effect that is about twice as much as the other leading risk factors, Douaud said. The next major risk factors are sleep, weight, smoking and blood pressure.
• Researchers identified seven genetic clusters that affect these vulnerable parts of the brain, some of which are also associated with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Douaud said the genetic and modifiable risk factors are not comparable.

More than 55 million people live with dementia around the world, and that figure is expected to increase to 153 million by 2050, according to the World Health Organization.

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Dementia is the loss of cognitive function, and symptoms result from brain neurons losing their connection to other brain cells and eventually dying, according to the National Institute on Aging . Everyone loses neurons over time, but the loss is more significant in dementia patients.

Diabetes and alcohol consumption “have been consistently shown to be associated with both cerebral and cognitive decline,” the researchers wrote in the Nature Communications study. And there is growing evidence that exposure to air pollution is a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia.

A 2020 Lancet report on dementia found that a dozen modifiable risk factors such as hypertension, hearing impairment, smoking and obesity together account for up to 40 percent of dementia cases worldwide.

A person’s age, genes, family history, a traumatic brain injury or a stroke also are potential risk factors .

What other experts say

Gill Livingston , a professor of psychiatry of older people at University College London and the lead author of the 2020 Lancet report, said that the new study was “very interesting” but that the participants in the U.K. Biobank are a “much healthier” and highly motivated group. The findings may not be applicable to a broader population.

Still, they show that people can make decisions to reduce their risk of cognitive decline as they age, Livingston said.

“There’s quite a lot people can do in their everyday life to maintain cognitive health ,” she said. “This just reinforces it.”

What you can do about it

Try to eat a healthy, varied diet to help lower your blood sugar, take measures to protect against “traffic-related pollution” and drink alcohol in moderation, Douaud said in an email.

“Of course, some of these should not only be down to individuals, and the burden should also be shared with (local) governments devising helpful policies,” she said.

Livingston said social and physical activity — talking with friends and exercising — “make a huge difference.” And stimulating experiences, walking outside , “seeing different things” can be beneficial, she said.

Hearing loss , which is more likely as a person ages, can take away opportunities for conversations that lead to “rapid brain stimulation,” Livingston said.

“And if you smoke, stop,” she said.

Marlene Cimons contributed to this report.

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Flashes, shimmers and blind spots: Here’s what migraine aura looks like.

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Our 7 best tips to build an exercise habit .

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image processing —

Playboy image from 1972 gets ban from ieee computer journals, use of "lenna" image in computer image processing research stretches back to the 1970s..

Benj Edwards - Mar 29, 2024 9:16 pm UTC

On Wednesday, the IEEE Computer Society announced to members that, after April 1, it would no longer accept papers that include a frequently used image of a 1972 Playboy model named Lena Forsén. The so-called " Lenna image ," (Forsén added an extra "n" to her name in her Playboy appearance to aid pronunciation) has been used in image processing research since 1973 and has attracted criticism for making some women feel unwelcome in the field.

Further Reading

In an email from the IEEE Computer Society sent to members on Wednesday, Technical & Conference Activities Vice President Terry Benzel wrote , "IEEE's diversity statement and supporting policies such as the IEEE Code of Ethics speak to IEEE's commitment to promoting an including and equitable culture that welcomes all. In alignment with this culture and with respect to the wishes of the subject of the image, Lena Forsén, IEEE will no longer accept submitted papers which include the 'Lena image.'"

An uncropped version of the 512×512-pixel test image originally appeared as the centerfold picture for the December 1972 issue of Playboy Magazine. Usage of the Lenna image in image processing began in June or July 1973 when an assistant professor named Alexander Sawchuck and a graduate student at the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute scanned a square portion of the centerfold image with a primitive drum scanner, omitting nudity present in the original image. They scanned it for a colleague's conference paper, and after that, others began to use the image as well.

The image's use spread in other papers throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s , and it caught Playboy's attention, but the company decided to overlook the copyright violations. In 1997, Playboy helped track down Forsén, who appeared at the 50th Annual Conference of the Society for Imaging Science in Technology, signing autographs for fans. "They must be so tired of me... looking at the same picture for all these years!" she said at the time. VP of new media at Playboy Eileen Kent told Wired , "We decided we should exploit this, because it is a phenomenon."

The image, which features Forsén's face and bare shoulder as she wears a hat with a purple feather, was reportedly ideal for testing image processing systems in the early years of digital image technology due to its high contrast and varied detail. It is also a sexually suggestive photo of an attractive woman, and its use by men in the computer field has garnered criticism over the decades, especially from female scientists and engineers who felt that the image (especially related to its association with the Playboy brand) objectified women and created an academic climate where they did not feel entirely welcome.

Due to some of this criticism, which dates back to at least 1996 , the journal Nature banned the use of the Lena image in paper submissions in 2018.

The comp.compression Usenet newsgroup FAQ document claims that in 1988, a Swedish publication asked Forsén if she minded her image being used in computer science, and she was reportedly pleasantly amused. In a 2019 Wired article , Linda Kinstler wrote that Forsén did not harbor resentment about the image, but she regretted that she wasn't paid better for it originally. "I’m really proud of that picture," she told Kinstler at the time.

Since then, Forsén has apparently changed her mind. In 2019, Creatable and Code Like a Girl created an advertising documentary titled Losing Lena , which was part of a promotional campaign aimed at removing the Lena image from use in tech and the image processing field. In a press release for the campaign and film, Forsén is quoted as saying, "I retired from modelling a long time ago. It’s time I retired from tech, too. We can make a simple change today that creates a lasting change for tomorrow. Let’s commit to losing me."

It seems like that commitment is now being granted. The ban in IEEE publications, which have been historically important journals for computer imaging development, will likely further set a precedent toward removing the Lenna image from common use. In the email, IEEE's Benzel recommended wider sensitivity about the issue, writing, "In order to raise awareness of and increase author compliance with this new policy, program committee members and reviewers should look for inclusion of this image, and if present, should ask authors to replace the Lena image with an alternative."

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