08.10.

2021

How to read a research paper

Lecture 4

Prof. Evgeni Magid

Kazan Federal University

Department of Robotics
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Acknowledgements

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Acknowledgements

Contents
• Research paper types
• Guidelines for how to read a research paper
• Tips on reading research papers
– Reading sequence
– References
• Homework explanations

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Research paper types

• Journal papers
• Conference paper
• Technical reports
• Book chapters
• Workshop abstracts / posters

• A very specific kind of document – hard for an

uninitiated reader
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What should we do if the conference

paper was not enough for
understanding the idea?
Look for
• A journal paper
• A technical report
• An undergraduate / graduate thesis
• Author homepage
• GitHub repositories

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Some of the main journals and

conferences in robotics
1. IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
2. IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics
3. International Journal of Robotics Research
4. IEEE Transactions on Robotics
5. IEEE/RSJ Conference on Robots and Systems (IROS)

• How to check the quality?

– www.scimagojr.com
– Scopus
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Questions to ask while reading a

research paper (1 of 2)
Read research papers critically and ask yourself :
1. What problem(s) are they solving?
 why are these problems important?
2. What did they really do?
 …as opposed to what the authors say or imply they
did
3. What is the contribution of the work?
 i.e. what is interesting or new to the field?
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Questions to ask while reading a

research paper (2 of 2)

Read research papers critically and ask yourself :

4. What methods are they using?
5. Would you have solved the problem differently?
6. Do all the pieces of their work fit together
logically?
7. What were the results?
8. Did they do what they set out to do?
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Guidelines for how to read a paper

• Read critically
• Read creatively
• Make notes as you read the paper
• After the first read-through, try to
summarize the paper in one or two
sentences
• Compare the paper to other works
• (Prepare a 1-page review)

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Critical questions (1 of 2)
• If the authors attempt to solve a problem, are they
solving the right problem?
• Are there simple solutions the authors do not seem to
have considered?
• What are the limitations of the solution?
 including limitations the authors might not have noticed or
clearly admitted
• Are the assumptions the authors make reasonable?

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Critical questions (2 of 2)
• Is the logic of the paper clear and justifiable, given the
assumptions, or is there a problem in the reasoning?
• If the authors present data, did they gather the right
data to substantiate their argument, and did they
appear to gather it in the correct manner?
• Did they interpret the data in a reasonable manner?
• Would other data be more compelling?

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Creative questions
• What are the good ideas in this paper?
• Do these ideas have other applications or extensions
that the authors might not have thought of?
• Can they be generalized further?
• Are there possible improvements that might make
important practical differences?
• If you were going to start doing research from this
paper, what would be the next thing you would do?

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Make notes as you read the paper

• Cover the margins of copies of papers with notes

• Use whatever style you prefer
• If you have questions or criticisms, write them
down so you do not forget them

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Technical Tips
• Use colours
• Draw connections, diagrams, flowcharts
• Write notes (on margins, notebook or PC)
• Mark unclear places (?)
• Mark “bottlenecks” and suspicious statements

Dr. Evgeni Magid 16

Summarize after the first read-through

• After the first read-through, try to summarize the paper
in one or two sentences
• Almost all good research papers try to provide an
answer for a specific question
– the question is natural
– a good idea just ends up answering a useful question
• If you can briefly describe a paper
– you recognized the authors’ question
– and the answer they provide

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Summarize after the first read-through

• Once you have focused on the main idea, you can go
back and try to outline the paper to gain insight into
more specific details
• If summarizing the paper in 1-2 sentences is easy…
• …go back and try to deepen your outline by
summarizing 3-4 most important sub-points of the
main idea

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Scientific contributions
• Scientific contributions can take many forms
– offer new ideas
– implement ideas and show how they work
– bring previous ideas together and unite them under a novel
framework
• Knowing other works in the area can help to determine
the actual contribution

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Other contributions
• Only publically open contributions are valuable
• New applications
– with open-source code and Wiki on GitHub / GitLab /
Bitbucket
• New datasets
– available online or for download
– available via API - questionable
• New sets of documents
– questionnaires
– manuals and instructions
– recommendations
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Prepare one page review

• It will take a significant amount of time, especially in the
beginning
• Takes several hours just to read the paper!
• Keeping the above in mind as you read the paper should
make the process easier

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One page review

• A one or two sentence summary of a paper
• A deeper, more extensive outline of the main points of
the paper, including for example
– assumptions made
– arguments presented
– data analyzed
– conclusions drawn
• Any limitations or extensions you see for ideas in the
paper
• Your opinion of the paper
– the quality of the ideas
– potential impact
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Reading sequence

1. Read the title

 What is the paper about?
2. Read the abstract
 Should give you a concise overview of the paper
 Some researchers suggest to ignore the abstract – why?
3. Read the introduction
 Look for motivations
 Relation to other work
 A more detailed overview

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Reading sequence

4. Look at the structure of the paper

 What do the remaining sections address?
 How do they fit together?
5. Read the previous/related work section
 How does this work relate?
 What is new or different about this work?

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Reading sequence

6. Read the conclusions

 What were their results?
7. Read the body of the paper
 You may want to skip over all the equations the first time
through

• Do you always need to read the body of the paper?

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The references
• The references won’t mean much to you if you’re not
familiar with the literature
• Sometimes important parts of the work may be
contained in the references
– particularly in conference papers since space is limited
• The references are very important when you are
researching a topic
– they point you to related research as well as the research
upon which the current paper builds upon
• Some references are useless
– why?
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How to select good papers for reading

• References in “seed papers”

• Good journals & conferences
• Good authors

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