How to Read a Paper

Tree-pass method

It is a practical and efficient way to read research papers.

The first pass

It gives you a general idea about the paper.

1. Carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction
2. Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else
3. Glance at the mathematical content (if any) to determine the underlying theoretical foundations
4. Read the conclusions
5. Glance over the references, mentally ticking off the ones you’ve already read

Then you should answer the following question:

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

The second pass

It lets you grasp the paper’s content, but ignore details such as proofs.It should take up to an hour for an experienced reader.

1. Look carefully at the figures, diagrams and other illustrations in the paper.
2. Remember to mark relevant unread references for further reading (this is a good way to learn more about the background of the paper).

The third pass

It helps you understand the paper in depth.The key to the third pass is to attempt to virtually re-implement the paper: that is, making the same assumptions as the authors, re-create the work.

1. Identify and challenge every assumption in every statement.
2. Think about how you yourself would present a particular idea.
3. Jot down ideas for future work.

At the end of this pass, you should be able to reconstruct the entire structure of the paper from memory, as well as be able to identify its strong and weak points. In particular, you should be able to pinpoint implicit assumptions, missing citations to relevant work, and potential issues with experimental or analytical techniques.

Doing a Literature Survey

1. use some well-chosen keywords to find three to five recent highly-cited papers in the area. Do one pass on each paper to get a sense of the work, then read their related work sections.
2. Find shared citations and repeated author names in the bibliography, see where they’ve published recently.
3. go to the website for these top conferences and look through their recent proceedings.