Lebanese French University

College of Education and Languages

Department of General Education
Morning - Stage 2
Comprehension

Art of Reading

BY :
Kaighan Mamand Salih

Supervision:
Mr.sahdwlla

Academic Year:
2020-2021
 1.Introduction

I am going to write about the act of reading a research paper which every
researcher has to do a lot. It is a skill that is very different from reading a
textbook or studying lecture notes, mainly for the reasons that these papers are
written in a highly technical and very condensed style because of page
limitations and that the intended audience is assumed to already know the area
well. Also, when reading a research paper, the goal is to understand the
scientific contributions the authors are making. This is not an easy task. It may
require going over the paper several times, and probably even looking up other
papers for some of the details. Reading research papers is the bread and butter
of grad school; graduate student might even read research papers for reasons
other than their research, such as to review them for a seminar class or for a
literature survey of a new field. In these situations, you may not have the time
to read the paper in its entirety or several times to extract all the nuances. For
all these reasons, reading a research paper can be challenging; the good news is
there are some simple guidelines that once you learn and apply them, will make
the process much more efficient. There is no correct way of reading research
papers. Those of you who have had significant experience reading such papers
will have developed a style of your own. For those of you who have not, I will
discuss one approach to battle the impediments of this task. This is a strategy
that requires three stages: Engage, Siege and Conquer! To develop an effective
reading style for research papers, it can help to know two things: what you
should get out of the paper, and where that information is located in the paper.
We will discuss this next.
 The structure of scientific research papers

A typical research paper contains the following sections:

• Title - every paper has a title and a list of authors with their affiliations

• Abstract - A very brief overview of the paper which says what is in it and
allows readers to see if it is relevant to them

• keywords - List of terms which describes papers’ ‘general subject’, ‘specific

subject’, etc.

• Introduction - This is where authors outline what the paper is about, what did
they do and why! It is usually structured as to provide a precise problem
definition, overview of state-of-the-art solutions (if any), goal of the paper, key
ideas, main contribution and a short outline.

• Materials and Methods - This section describes the proposed solution/method

while details the contributions. It also explains how the study was conducted,
what materials, data, procedure, methodology, etc. was used in the study

• Experiments and results - The section describes the experiments conducted

and highlights the findings and ties it in with how successful the proposed
solution has been in achieving what the study set out to do in the first place.

• Discussion - This is where the authors elaborate upon their findings, and
explain e.g. What the implications of their findings are, if it supports or
contradicts established or provisional methods, etc
• Conclusion - Briefly reviews the problem and outlines the key ideas and main
contributions of the study. It might further emphasize the importance of the
results in the field, and ties it in with the previous research. It is also common to
outline limitations of the approach and plan future work.

• References - A bibliographic list of citations, documenting all of the sources

that is used for this research or that has acted as evidence of their work.

Probably the least effective way of reading a paper is reading from title to
references. In fact, it can be useful to read the paper “out of order” and skip
certain sections. Let us now describe a strategy to efficiently read research
papers.

2. Step 1 Engage!

Begin by reading the introduction (not the abstract1 ), then glance through the
pages just to look at any illustrations, pictures and plots, and finally read the
final summary and conclusions. Now, set the paper aside and ask yourself a
number of questions:

• What is the paper about?

• What problem does it claim to help solve?

• Why the problem is important? (motivation, challenges)

• What is the proposed solution? (hypothesis, key idea)

• Is the problem or the solution of interest to you?

 • What does the paper accomplishes? (main contribution, important findings)

• If you were to tackle this problem, could you think of other (or better)
solutions?

If you ask yourself these questions you are engaging with the paper in a way
that you do not when you are reading a textbook! Notice this quick skim will
take you just a few minutes and it is often the decisive factor on whether you
actually want to dig deeper into this paper or instead find a more interesting
one to read. Whether you decide to read or put this paper aside, it will be useful
for future references if you make a note and describe the paper using few
sentences (preferably with a non-technical language) based on your answers to
above questions. In fact, try to produce an ‘unstructured’ (a.k.a. limited,
indicative) abstract. This is a very brief overview of the paper (one paragraph of
150 to 200 words) that summarizes and communicates the research reported in
the paper to other researchers2

3. Step 2 Siege!

If you decided to dig deeper, you need to read the paper with greater care but
at this stage ignore details such as theorem proofs. Your aim should be to try to
understand the key ideas of the paper. It is very common to get bogged down
by technical or mathematical details and fail to see the big picture. Here is a
strategy: read the paper front to back but leave out any equations or
complicated descriptions, so that you don’t slow down your progress through
the paper. It can help if you print out the paper and grab something to write and
 highlight with (put a question mark next to things you don’t understand and
move on, circle words you do not know, jot down further ideas, questions or
criticism). Research papers are usually presented in the conferences before they
find their way to a journal. If you are reading a journal paper, it might be useful
to find the conference version as it is usually a shorter read. Also, it is worth
checking the authors website looking for presentation poster or slides. Reading
is an active task; as you read the paper (or after you finished) ask yourself some
more questions:

• Does the paper propose a method in which case, is it sound? does it work?

– What are the main contributions? key ideas?

– How does their work fit in with other similar works?

– What improvement/extensions do they contribute?

– What are the main assumptions? Do they appear to be valid?

– What are the limitation of the approach?

– What are the novelties/strengths?

• How is the method evaluated?

– Are there any experimental/analytical errors?

– How the authors demonstrate/prove that their solutions work?

• What are the findings?

– Do their results make sense?

– Are the findings supported by persuasive evidence?

 – Is there an alternative interpretation of the data that the authors did not
address?

– How are the findings unique/new/unusual or supportive of other works in the

field?

– Do the authors do what they said they are going to do?

• What is the most important figure?

• What are future direction of this research?

– What are some of the specific applications of the ideas presented here?

– Can the research results be applied to another context?

– What are some further experiments that would answer remaining questions?

• Is the approach something that you might use in your work?

– How do these results relate to the work you are interested in? To other work
you have read abou

Note that you can generally answer all of these questions without
understanding a single equation! “Writing is thinking” as David McCullough said
“To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard”. In order to siege the
paper and force it to surrender and reveal its secrets you shall write a summary
note at this stage as well. Organize your thoughts by writing a structured
abstract for the paper. A structured (a.k.a complete or informative) abstract
contains a deeper and more extensive overview of the paper that outlines the
main points including for example assumptions made, arguments presented,
data analyzed, main results and conclusions drawn. Structured abstracts are still
 short (typically less than 500 words) and usually formatted with any of the
following subheadings: Background, Objectives, Methods, Results, Conclusions.
In your notes, also write down your questions and comments such as any
limitations or extensions you see for the ideas in the paper, youropinion of the
paper (primarily, the quality of the ideas and its potential impact). It is also
useful to make note of most important figures/tables/etc. and interesting
references to follow upon. Your notes can act as a stand-alone entity instead of
the paper for your future references.

4. Step 3 Conquer!

In order to understand a paper, you often only need to go through step 1 and 2;
most papers surrender after you Engage and Siege! Sometimes however, you
have to get in, delve deep and Conquer! Here is a strategy: read the paper much
more carefully, trying to work through all the nitty-gritty details. This will
involve looking up points that were not fully explained by consulting the
references, textbook, online resources (such as Wikipedia), etc. It is very helpful
if you take note as you read; work out the math, make sketches, draw figures,
visualize the procedures. Check the authors website, sometimes they put
supplementary materials which can include data and code. When possible run
the code and redo the experiments. The best is to implement the method
yourself. I don’t know a better way to completely understand a method other
than implementing it yourself. It also might be useful to follow on authors’ line
of work in particular looking at the publications that proceeded and succeeded
this one. Note that online tools such as Google Scholar or Microsoft Academic
Search allow you to find out which later (more recent) papers have cited this
one. Above all, be critical. Read the paper as if you were asked to review it. As a
reviewer you need to evaluate the paper in term of its contribution, originality,
strength and weaknesses. Put the paper into context (how this article relates to
other work in the field. How it ties in with key issues and findings by others,
including yourself) and consider its significance (impact to the field; importance
to your own work). Ask yourself:

• Is the research problem significant?

• Are the contributions significant?

• Are the claims valid?

• Is the actual execution of research correct?

• Are the correct conclusion drawn from the findings?

• What is a good argument against the case made by the authors?

• What is already known about this topic?

• What does this study add?

Be aware, reviewing is a challenging task: to form a truly educated opinion on a

scientific subject, you need to become familiar with current research in that
field. Remember: dont feel unworthy if you dont understand all of the details!
The fact is, there will be things you simply do not understand because either
you do not have the adequate background or they are just too complicated.
Dont be afraid to ask questions of people who may know. Understanding a
research paper at depth might require reading it several times. Besides, looking
at references can become a recursive task as you will traverse from references
of one paper to another in order to make sense of the first one. You can end up
spending months learning about a particular research. Reading a research paper
can take a very long time when you start your research, but don’t worry, it will
go much faster as you gain experience. If you find yourself stuck, always ask
yourself: Am I spending too much time on this work? Have I gone back to read
an article or learn a method that would help me understand this work better

5. Acknowledgement

I am grateful to all who have helped me to read research papers over the years.
In particular to Professor Sir Mike Brady and Professor Julia Schnabel (both from
Oxford University) who last summer put this wonderful reading group together
as part of the Medical Imaging Summer School 2014 which I was attending.
There is a link to that event in the references if you are interested, and some
more links to procrastinate on how to read research papers!

6. References

• Mike Brady, Julia Schnabel, “Medical Imaging Summer School: Reading Group
Instructions”, Available at http://iplab.dmi.unict.it/miss14/ReadingGroup.html,
2014, Accessed on Aug 2014

• Philip W. L. Fong, “Reading a Computer Science Research Paper”, Available at

http://pages. cpsc.ucalgary.ca/˜pwlfong/Pub/inroads2009.pdf, 2009, Accessed
on Aug 2014

• Tia Newhall, “Some tips for reading research papers”, Available at

http://www.cs. swarthmore.edu/˜newhall/cs97/s00/ReadingAdvice.html,
2000, Accessed on Aug 201
 • Bill Griswold, Gail Murphy Christina Conati, Charles Rich, “How to Read a
Research Paper”, Available at
http://web.cs.wpi.edu/˜rich/courses/howto.html, 2008, Accessed on Aug 2014.

• Michael Mitzenmacher, “How to read a research paper”, Available at

http://www.eecs. harvard.edu/˜michaelm/postscripts/ReadPaper.pdf,
Accessed on Aug 2014