How to Read a Paper

Reading : "How to Read a Paper," Keshav, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 2007

This writer shares an efficient method to read a paper. Because researchers may spent a lot of hours reading papers and it is terrible if wasting much effort in the process, he introduces the three-pass approach.

First of all, skim through the target paper quickly. Read only titles, abstract, introduction, and conclusion to get the main idea and contribution of that paper. After that, it is enough for us to decide whether we need to read further. Second, get the key points from figures, diagrams, and other illustrations. Graphs usually help us to know the thrust more clearly and show the results of the paper. After grasp more contents, it is time to skip the paper if abstruse or useless; otherwise, enter the third pass. In the third pass, do a deep reading to fully understand a paper. Pay attention to details, such as proves, assumptions, and particular techniques. After this pass, it should be able for us to reconstruct the overall idea and give practical comments. Besides, the writer suggests doing a literature survey iteratively. That is, after reading a paper, we may select relative papers to study according to citations and references.

The writer follows the discipline for many years. He is able to adjusts the depth of paper evaluation depending on his needs and how much time he has, and the three-pass approach really helps him to read a paper efficiently.