The first round belongs to bird's eye reading, and the paper is scanned quickly. Therefore, it is decided whether to enter the last two rounds of reading. This round takes 5 to 10 minutes and includes the following five steps:

1. Read the title, abstract and introduction carefully;

2. Read the chapter titles and skip other contents;

3. Browse the mathematical content (if any) to determine the basic theoretical basis.

4. Look at the conclusion;

Take a cursory look at the references and find out what you have read.

At the end of the first round, you should be able to answer the following five questions:

1. Category: What category does this paper belong to? Is it an empirical quantitative analysis? Or improve the existing method? Or come up with a new theory?

2. Background: What papers is this paper related to? What is the theoretical basis of analysis?

3. Correctness: According to the experience, is the premise assumption of this article established?

4. Contribution: What is the main contribution of this paper?

5. Clarity: Is the text of this paper clear?

Second reading

In the second round, read the paper more carefully, but skip the details (such as the proof process). This helps you to write down the main points or make comments in the blanks when reading.

1. Read the pictures in the newspaper carefully. Is the coordinate axis marked accurately? Is there an error bar in the statistical results to indicate that the conclusion is statistically significant? Common mistakes like this help you to judge whether a paper is excellent or not.

2. Mark the references related to your research that you haven't read (this will help you understand the research background of this article).

Third round reading

In order to fully understand a paper (especially when you are a reviewer), you need to read it for the third time. The focus of this round is to basically reproduce the paper, that is, to reinterpret the whole work with the same assumptions as the paper. By comparing your work with the work of the paper, you can easily find the innovations, hidden shortcomings and assumptions of the paper.

The above is what Bian Xiao shared today. In short, this method focuses on reading a paper in three rounds, rather than reading it carefully from beginning to end. Each reading round achieves a specific purpose on the basis of the previous round.