Studying Method

Authors
Affiliations

Doctor of Physical Therapy

B.S. in Kinesiology

Doctor of Physical Therapy

B.A. in Neuroscience

Matt DiMaio Textbook method

  1. Flip through each page of the chapter
  2. Read the End-of-chapter quiz
  3. Read all bold print
    • Titles
    • Subtitles
    • Headings
    • Bold words
  4. 1st & last sentence of each paragraph
  5. Read through

Literature Review

“DOING A LITERATURE SURVEY Paper reading skills are put to the test in doing a literature survey. This will require you to read tens of papers, perhaps in an unfamiliar field. What papers should you read? Here is how you can use the three-pass approach to help.”1

“First, use an academic search engine such as Google Scholar or CiteSeer and some well-chosen keywords to find three to five recent papers in the area. Do one pass on each paper to get a sense of the work, then read their related work sections. You will find a thumbnail summary of the recent work, and perhaps, if you are lucky, a pointer to a recent survey paper. If you can find such a survey, you are done. Read the survey, congratulating yourself on your good luck.”1

“Otherwise, in the second step, find shared citations and repeated author names in the bibliography. These are the key papers and researchers in that area. Download the key papers and set them aside. Then go to the websites of the key researchers and see where they’ve published recently. That will help you identify the top conferences in that field because the best researchers usually publish in the top conferences.”1

“The third step is to go to the website for these top conferences and look through their recent proceedings. A quick scan will usually identify recent high-quality related work. These papers, along with the ones you set aside earlier, constitute the first version of your survey. Make two passes through these papers. If they all cite a key paper that you did not find earlier, obtain and read it, iterating as necessary”1

Scientific article reading 3-pass method

Note

“I’ve used this approach for the last 15 years to read conference proceedings, write reviews, do background research, and to quickly review papers before a discussion. This disciplined approach prevents me from drowning in the details before getting a bird’s-eye-view. It allows me to estimate the amount of time required to review a set of papers. Moreover, I can adjust the depth of paper evaluation depending on my needs and how much time I have.”1

In 2007, S. Keshav introduced their own 3-pass method for reading scientific articles1. Being able to efficiently and systematically read and assess articles is helpful to avoid having gaps in your knowledge and to save countless hours in the long run.

Keshav suggested to use a 3-pass method with each pass increasing in depth of understanding instead of reading an article in depth from start to finish1. Each pass is designed to achieve specific goals and builds upon the previous pass:

  1. The 1st pass provides general understanding of the paper1.
  2. The 2nd pass is to understand the content but not the details1.
  3. The 3rd pass is to understand the content in depth1.

1st Pass

The 1st pass should take 5-10 minutes, you should quickly scan to understand the paper as a whole.

  1. Carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction
  2. Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else
  3. Read the conclusions
  4. Scan the references, mentally ticking off the ones you’ve already read

Keshav had 5C’s you should be able to answer after the 1st pass:

Table 1: Keshav’s 5C’s1
Category What type of paper is this?
A measurement paper?
An analysis of an existing system?
A description of a research prototype?
Context Which other papers is it related to?
Which theoretical bases were used to analyze the problem?
Correctness Do the assumptions appear to be valid?
Contributions What are the paper’s main contributions?
Clarity Is the paper well written?
Note

During this pass, you should be considering whether you need to perform a 2nd or 3rd pass1.

You can stop at the 1st pass if the paper doesn’t interest you, you do not have the requisite knowledge to understand the paper, or that the authors make invalid assumptions1. Keshav states that the 1st pass is also adequate for papers thatare not in your research area, but may be relevant in the future1.

2nd Pass

The 2nd pass should take ~1 hour and you should read the paper with greater care but ignore information that is too detailed such as proofs1. At this stage, Keshav suggests jotting down key points or adding comments at this stage1.

  1. Look carefully at the figures, diagrams and other illustrations in the paper1.
  2. Pay special attention to graphs and observe if the axes properly labeled1.
  3. Are results shown with error bars, so that conclusions are statistically significant?1
  4. Mark relevant unread references for further reading in order to better understand the background of the paper and the topic1.

During the 2nd pass, if you notice mistakes in the figures, diagrams, and other illustrations, this is indicative that the article is of poorer quality than one without these mistakes1.

By the end of a successful 1st pass, you should have a good enough grasp of the content that you can summarize the main points of the paper with supporting evidence to someone else1.

Important

Being able to summarize a paper and its evidence to someone else is appropriate for a field you are interested in, but is inadequate for a topic in your research specialty1.

By the end of the 2nd pass, it is acceptable if there are still items that you do not understand1. This is especially true if:

  1. It is a novel subject to you1.
  2. There was a proof or experimental technique you do not yet understand1.
  3. The paper was poorly written with unsubstantiated assertions and numerous forward references1.

3rd Pass

“To fully understand a paper, particularly if you are reviewer, requires a third pass. 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. By comparing this re-creation with the actual paper, you can easily identify not only a paper’s innovations, but also its hidden failings and assumptions. This pass requires great attention to detail. You should identify and challenge every assumption in every statement. Moreover, you should think about how you yourself would present a particular idea. This comparison of the actual with the virtual lends a sharp insight into the proof and presentation techniques in the paper and you can very likely add this to your repertoire of tools. During this pass, you should also jot down ideas for future work. This pass can take about four or five hours for beginners, and about an hour for an experienced reader. 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.”1

References

1.
Keshav S. How to Read a Paper. Published online 2007.

Citation

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