· 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 How to Read a Research Paper – A Guide to Setting Research read a research paper – for example, the fact that I assign a paper is (probably) a good reason for you to read it. You may also need to carefully read a paper if you are asked to review it, or if it is relevant to your own research
How to Read a Research Paper – A Guide to Setting Research Goals, Finding Papers to Read, and More
Sign in. Working in data science and machine learning is an exciting and challenging field. New techniques and tools are constantly percolating and honestly, it can feel overwhelming.
Many of these new developments are found and first revealed in academic research articles. Extracting knowledge from these articles is difficult because the intended audience of these papers tend to be other researchers.
Yet in order to stay current reading papers is an essential skill — luckily one that can be improved with diligence and practice. In graduate school reading research papers, you get good should get good… at reading papers and ingesting research.
Public tax money is how most of this research gets funded anyways! The goal here is to democratize academia, reading research papers, just a bit, and provide you with a scaffolding to apply when walking through a paper.
The way I read papers is not significantly unique, but it is effective and has served me well. Keep in mind it is not the only way, many techniques exist and as you read more and more I am sure you will find your own unique style. This guide is broken down as follows:. Reading papers certainly builds character because It often takes many hours and there is no guarantee you walk away with the whole story. This is not reading research papers disparage you, reading research papers, but merely to be open and transparent, reading research papers.
Reading papers is difficult, there are no two ways about it. Advances in fields such as machine learning, deep learning, data science, databases, and data engineering often come in the form of academic research, whose language is that of academic papers.
Think about some of the techniques you might use: Convolutional Neural NetworksPCAand AdaBoost even Deep Boosting! These all came out of research, and yes they all have papers. Also, consider that there are many papers on the application and use of these techniques and when you are trying to solve a specific problem, these papers can be critical. Beyond staying current with research it is also worth traveling to the past and giving older papers a read.
You will learn so much. I promise. Looking at the field of deep learning it seems as though a new critical paper is coming out every few days or weeks. The only way to stay on top of it is to get a hold of the paper and give it a read. Here is a figure from a scientific paper¹ by Hubbard and Dunbar, about reading scientific papers. Scientific Paper inception! Results of Chi-square tests are indicated on the left hand side.
B: The mean importance rank of sections as a function of career stage. Asterisks above data points indicate significant differences in response compared with the previous career stage as determined by Mann-Whitney post-hoc tests. One unsurprising result indicates the further an academic progresses into their career, reading research papers easier they find each section of a paper to read.
An interesting point is how the various career stages view the importance of each section. It also means they know their field very well, thereofore, the introduction and abstract have less importance. Early stage PhD students find the methods, results, and figures fairly difficult to understand. This makes perfect sense as those are the areas of a paper that require the most knowledge of a field to get through. You are likely to have a similar experience.
What is it exactly that makes going through this process so difficult and time consuming? Clearly there is a lot to consider when reading a paper. Time to lighten the mood. Here is a hilarious article written on the horrors of reading papers by Dr. Adam Ruben from Science. Reading research papers shows even scientists can agree that papers are both difficult to read and given how dense they are, will keep you regular. Think about this, the more papers you read, the more you will learn and the faster this process of reading becomes.
Trends start cropping up into plain view, and you begin to gain insight into the scientific methodunderstand what certain authors and groups are working on, and form an appreciation reading research papers the field you are learning about. Over time all of this knowledge and skill builds into your ability to read papers quicker, more efficiently and with greater success.
Learning to read papers is akin to learning to eat. It is messy reading research papers first, and your palette is not very well developed. Good news here, reading research papers. The overwhelming majority of papers follow, more or less, the same convention of organization:, reading research papers. Simply starting to read from page one to the end will probably do you no good, reading research papers. Beyond retaining limited information, you will be exhausted and have gained very little for the tremendous effort.
This is where many people stop. Do plan to spend anywhere from 3—6 hours to really digest a paper, remember they are very dense! Be ready and willing to make several passes through the paper, each time looking to extract different information and understanding. And please, do yourself a favor and do not read the paper front to end on your first pass.
Below are two lists. the systematic approach I take, more or less, when reading a paper ii. a general list of questions I try to answer as I go through the paper.
I typically add more specific questions depending on the paper. As mentioned above, here is a reading research papers list of questions to help guide you. If you can answer these you have a solid understanding of the paper, at least to where you can communicate intelligently about it to others, reading research papers. I recommend finding people either in person or online to discuss the paper. Start a journal club with a goal of getting through 1—2 papers a month.
The amount of extra insight I have gained from discussing a paper with a friend is immense. the only thing better than suffering through a paper alone, is suffering through it with friends! On another note there was a good article written by Keshav³ on how to read a paper. He introduces and explores a three phrase approach that might be of some interest to you.
Give it a read as well! You can find papers primarily from several sources:. As you begin to read more papers you are going to want to store them somewhere.
Tossing PDFs into a folder on your drive is all well and good, but there are creature comforts missing. Most researchers and grad students use a reference reading research papers. Zotero and Mendeley are very popular, I like Zotero. Recently, I have been using PaperPile.
I like PaperPile because it is lightweight, lives in my browser, and uses Google Drive to back up and store all my PDFs. It has a simple, refreshing user interface, reading research papers, and it has a really good tagging and folder hierarchy system.
I can also annotate PDFs in my browser and build citation lists when I write. You get a lot of these features with almost any reference manager, but I happen to like PaperPile best. A reference manager will quickly become your best friend as you collect and read more and more papers. Thanks for reading through this.
I hope you found it helpful and it gave you some good ideas when tackling your next reading research papers. Most people have their own unique process when reading a paper. I am sure you will develop your own tweaks in time, hopefully this is a good template for you to get started.
For now just trust the process. I am also hoping that we reading research papers get some good feedback and comments with other tips and tricks from readers. Reach me at: datasci kmshannon. Perceptions of scientific research literature and strategies for reading papers depend on academic career stage. PloS one12 12e Simply the best coffee in San Diego. How to read a paper, reading research papers. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review reading research papers, 37 383— As a data scientist my ultimate goal is to continue deciphering order from the chaos.
Your home for data science. A Medium publication sharing reading research papers, ideas and codes. Get started. Open in app. Sign in Get started. Editors' Picks Features Reading research papers Dives Grow Contribute. Get started Open in app. Guide to Reading Academic Research Papers.
How to Make Research Easy (\u0026 Even Enjoyable)
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· 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 How to Read a Research Paper – A Guide to Setting Research read a research paper – for example, the fact that I assign a paper is (probably) a good reason for you to read it. You may also need to carefully read a paper if you are asked to review it, or if it is relevant to your own research
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