painful

To do research, you must read papers.

If you don't know what field you have studied, how can you find the starting point of your own research?

However, for many beginners, reading papers is a painful thing.

They started in a hurry, searched a bunch of papers with keywords in China HowNet, downloaded them, opened the first one and read it word by word from beginning to end.

After reading an article, put it aside; Read another article.

After reading the back, I found that the previous paper had been forgotten. So I turned around and watched it again.

This is only a Chinese paper, not an English paper. ...

If you have unlimited time and attention, there is no big problem in doing so. The big deal is that reading time is longer and efficiency is lower.

However, your time is a scarce resource.

Your attention is a scarce resource.

We should not be so hasty in dealing with scarce resources.

When reading papers, to improve efficiency, we need to do the following work:

Select the appropriate literature and determine the priority of reading;

Even if it is a filtered document, read the contents in the correct order;

Take notes in an appropriate way.

This paper introduces some methods, skills and tools to you on the above three points. I hope I can help you (a beginner in research).

What? You are not a beginner?

Then you don't have to read on. Read the newspaper quickly.

choose

From many related papers, it is not easy to choose which ones are worth reading or even which ones should be read first.

You need to know how to find relevant papers.

You should also look at the field and see which papers are more popular with your peers.

There are still many results (possible quantities) after screening, and you need to distinguish the value (reliability) of the paper.

In the last article, I introduced some solutions to the first two problems. Including:

How to use artificial intelligence to help you find a paper?

How to quickly sort out domain literature?

After reading this article, you are welcome to click on the link, read or review the relevant content.

In most cases, you still should not read all the papers after the first two rounds of screening.

Don't mistake what is printed for valuable knowledge.

My advice to students is to prioritize the paper carriers according to their "reliability".

Different paper carriers form the spectrum between "reliable" and "unreliable" poles.

The highest priority is the top journals.

In addition to these "fairy monsters" level journals, there are also top journals recognized in various fields.

You can go to the search engine yourself, or you can ask your peers.

The last reliability ranking ... is the undergraduate thesis.

Of course, there are also excellent works in the undergraduate graduation thesis.

However, the proportion of unreliable papers is really unimaginable.

This is not only because undergraduates lack research experience and knowledge reserves ... it is mainly an attitude problem.

Most undergraduates have no motivation to finish their graduation thesis seriously.

Many papers are the result of a surprise attack in the last few days (even hours) before the deadline.

What is the quality of such a paper?

What did you say?/Sorry?

When I say undergraduate thesis, I don't just mean the domestic situation.

In the TED video, Tim Urben tells the story of his graduation thesis writing process. There are Chinese subtitles, which is very humorous. I suggest you have a look.

The ancients said:

Take the law, only get it; Take the law and only get it.

Think about it, an undergraduate, the reference materials for writing papers are all the graduation papers of previous undergraduates. What is his thesis level?

Whenever I see that students put papers from excellent journals on it, instead of reading, analyzing and quoting, but want to mix a lot of dissertations in the bibliography, I will ask to redo the literature review link.

sequence

At least for now, the machine can't help you read the newspaper.

You must do it yourself.

I recommend you a video tutorial on how to read a paper, which only takes more than 7 minutes. But it will be very rewarding for you after reading it.

Professor Peter W. Carr teaches at the University of Minnesota. I have worked with students for many years and accumulated rich experience in guiding paper reading and writing.

When this video was released, he and his team had published more than 300 papers.

The picture below shows the (partial) honors and awards he won on the website of the University of Minnesota.

Considering that you may not be used to watching English videos without subtitles, I will tell you the main content of the tutorial and add some thoughts to the narrative.

Professor Carl first emphasized:

Don't read word for word, read linearly from beginning to end.

Please don't.

Steven Pinker pointed out in his book The Feeling of Style:

Writing is the process of transforming network thinking into linear strings with tree-like grammatical structure (see the chapter "Network, Tree and String").

The purpose of reading is definitely not to memorize those linear strings repeatedly, but to restore the author's online thinking and process it.

You can safely and boldly adjust the reading order.

Don't worry about spoilers, the paper is not a detective novel.

Professor Karl gave the following reading order:

The first is the title, keywords and abstract.

Browse before deciding whether to continue reading.

Then read the conclusion. See if this article is a research that interests you through the conclusion.

Here, it seems unremarkable. Many articles and books will also tell you the above knowledge.

But Professor Carr emphasized that you can stop reading an article at any time and even throw it away.

My interpretation is that reading papers should follow economic laws, don't try to salvage sunk costs, and spend more time on papers that are not optimistic or interested.

Many articles will tell you that after reading the above, you should read the introduction.

But Professor Carr said: Don't do this.

You should look at the chart (if any) first.

At this stage, you should only look at the chart, not read the sentences in the context of the chart word by word.

Whether the chart attracts your attention directly determines whether you want to do the next step-look at the introduction.

I quite agree with this order.

Because the main function of the introduction is to emphasize the value and necessity of the research topic of the paper, it will try to connect with the bigger picture and more important issues. Some even have the element of "boasting".

The chart results of the main part of the study can actually show which direction a paper actually tends to and how far it has gone in the study of a certain problem.

After reading the chart and introduction, you need to read the core part of the paper.

Where is the core part?

No, not experiments, but research results and discussions.

Beginners who write papers are often overjoyed after making charts. After the chart was displayed, I didn't analyze the text, so I happily went directly to write the conclusion.

Although "a picture is worth a thousand words", is the result of your chart really so self-evident?

To explore the research results, we should answer the readers' possible questions and dig out all the clues from the experimental results.

This is the place to see real kung fu.

Even in the face of the same information, some people can dig out and analyze the content, which is much richer than others.

If you have leisure, you can read Ma Boyong's Daming under the Microscope. See how deep simple historical data can be analyzed.

Only when you think the author's discussion part is valuable, do you really need to read the most difficult part of the paper-the experiment.

You should read this part carefully from beginning to end. You must slow down and spend more time. For some experimental processes, you even need to take the time to try to repeat them.

From the perspective of pursuing efficiency, only the truly valuable things are worth your precious time.

notes

Many people think it's over after reading the paper.

Don't!

You have spent so long reading newspapers, so you should cherish the time spent.

Some people say that I have a good brain, and I have memorized it!

Scientific experiments have proved that the memory ability of human brain is far from as reliable as you think.

Professor Peter W. Carr emphasized that you need to take notes in time. He even quoted a China proverb "A good brain is no match for a bad pen".

You may think it's easy to take notes.

But pay attention to the note-taking standard proposed by Professor Karl:

In the future, all you have to do is read your notes, instead of reading the paper twice.

It is no ordinary note to undertake such an important mission.

This way of taking notes is described by Mr. Wan Weigang as:

I once heard a joke about how we learn from others. We went to other people's houses like thieves and moved everything except the kitchen sink-then we went back and moved the kitchen sink, too.

You can click on the link to view teacher Wan Weigang's classic blog "Learning with Strength", in which the note-taking method can be used not only to record reading notes, but also to write papers.

Taking notes, methods are important, but tools are also important.

Many people like to write it on paper and then throw it away.

Although some people use notebooks to record, it is difficult to find out after taking a few notes.

Don't use this outdated method in the era of mobile Internet.

You can record the notes of the paper directly in digital form.

For example, I like to use MarginNote Pro, a paper reading and note-taking tool. With Apple Pencil, you can find the feeling of writing with a pen and paper when taking notes.

However, compared with paper and pen records, the storage and retrieval effect of digital paper reading notes is much higher.

You can easily export your notes to Impression Notes, so that even handwritten Chinese records can be easily retrieved.

The picture below shows the result of i query's word "tooth".

If there are some new concepts in the paper, you don't understand. Never mind, write it down, too.

Don't try to solve it at that time, because it will destroy your overall reading sense and the fluency of your notes.

After writing the first draft of a paper, according to the key points of these questions, follow the map to find relevant information.

This information should help you digest and understand new knowledge.

I suggest you go to Wikipedia, youtube and other websites to see if there are any suitable tutorials corresponding to the knowledge points.

Some papers, because the original author's writing style is too obscure, you can find many papers or blog articles that latecomers try to paraphrase in a clearer way.

These contents can be added directly to your notes, or you can record new notes and link them with the original ones.

Impression notes can automatically help you analyze the relationship between this note and other notes.

These notes are recorded at different times, placed in different directories and labeled differently.

However, artificial intelligence links the contents together according to their relevance.

This ability to connect across time and space is called "remote association". Many writers write high-value and creative words in this way.

In order to achieve this goal, they need to spend a lot of time sorting out index cards.

For you, it only takes a few clicks to achieve the same goal.

summary

To sum up, this article tells you several key points of reading papers efficiently:

First of all, we should choose the appropriate literature and determine the priority of reading. You need to distinguish papers of different types and values, and give priority to the papers that are most likely to be valuable within the limited time constraints.

Secondly, read the contents of the filtered documents in the correct order. Don't scratch your eyebrows and beard. Start with the most interesting places and put the most difficult and time-consuming chapters at the end. When reading, be prepared to quit and avoid stepping on the pit.

Take notes in an appropriate way. The notes you study hard can help you "steal" all the important contents of an article. Using appropriate note-taking tools to record and organize notes will not only make your notes more effective, but also make your writing full of ideas.

discuss

How do you usually read newspapers? Did you encounter any difficulties in reading the paper? How did you solve it? Are there any better methods and skills for marking papers? Welcome to leave a message, share your experiences and ideas with you, and let's discuss them together.

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