Thesis reading skills

Preface

The article comes from University of Waterloo Of David R. Cheriton

Every year researchers spend thousands of hours reading papers , Learning to read papers effectively is a key but rarely taught skill , This article teaches you a " Three steps " Read the paper
In order to avoid you get an article and read it from beginning to end , Each step of this three-step method has a goal , And each step builds on the previous step

• first pass

  The first step is to have a general understanding of this paper

• second pass

  The second part is to grasp the key point of the article , Not the details

• third pass

  The third step is to understand the depth of this article more carefully

first pass

The first step is to go through the paper quickly , This step should cost 5 To 10 minute , In this step you should do the following

• Read all the topics carefully ,abstract,introduction
• Read the opening of all chapters and sub chapters , But omit other things
• read conclusion
• A glance at quotation

After completing the above steps, you should answer the following five questions

• Category: What kind of article is this ? yes measurement paper？ Or analyze the existing system ？ Or describe a study prototype?
• Context: Which other paper And this paper of ？ He used that method to analyze the problem ?
• Correctness: Is the hypothesis put forward in the article valid ？
• contributions: What is the innovation or main contribution of this article ？
• clarity: Is this article well written ?

After the first step, you can decide whether you want to continue reading , Decide if this article is right for you , Or your existing knowledge is relatively lacking and you are not qualified to read this article
If you are the author of a paper , You can use this first step to push back , Whether the reader has finished reading your article will stop at the first step , You have to pay for your section perhaps sub-section Make a coherent title, Write a simple , Understandable abstract, If the reader cannot understand the main idea of your article after the first step , Then this article will probably be rejected … If the reader is in 5 I can't understand the highlights of this article in minutes , Readers may not read him again

second pass

The second requires us to read this article more carefully , But ignore the details of this article , Such as the proof process , This will help us to write down this article key point, Our second reading should focus on the following

• Look at the picture carefully , The table has other explanations , Especially figure
• Remember to mark the quotations that you haven't seen , It's convenient to see it later ( It is very easy to understand the background of this article )

The second one should take about an hour , After this part, you should be able to master the general content of this article , At this point you should have to do a summarize

Sometimes you still don't know the general idea of this article after the second step , Maybe the topic of this article is too new for you , You have three choices at this time , Namely
(a) Put the paper aside , Don't watch the ball , And pray that if you don't understand the meaning of this paper, it won't affect your career …
(b) To understand the background of this article ( Start by quoting )
( c ) Go on to step three

third pass

The point of the third step is that you almost re - implement this article , You make the same assumptions as the author , And finish the work again , The task of completing this article is not to let you write another article, but to redefine the innovation of this article
This step requires you to pay attention to every detail , At this time, you can think about how to present a different idea, After all this work, you should idea Write it down for future work
This step may cost a novice 4 To 5 Hours of time , It may take an hour ( For an old hand ), In the last step you should reconstruct this structure in your mind , Find out the of the article strong and weak point