<Pinned> How to Read a Paper

It’s a good question that “how to read a paper ?”. After reading some papers I suddenly find myself actually don’t know how to effectively and efficiently read a paper. So I’ll make some collections here on this topic.

• “How to Read a Research Paper”, by Michael Mitzenmacher
• “How to Read an Engineering Research Paper”, by William Griswold

You can refer to the links above to get some general ideas (these links were copied from Lingming Zhang’s slides of cs527-s23).

According to William Griswold, try to answer the problem below:

1. What are the motivations for this work? For a research paper, there is an expectation that a problem has been solved that no one else has published in the literature. This problem intrinsically has two parts. The first is often unstated, what I call the people problem. The people problem is the benefits that are desired in the world at large; for example some issue of quality of life, such as saved time or increased safety. The second part is the technical problem, which is: why doesn’t the people problem have a trivial solution? There is also an implication that previous solutions to the problem are inadequate. What are the previous solutions and why are they inadequate? Finally, the motivation and statement of the problem are distilled into a research question, the question that the paper sets out to answer. This might be more focused than the problem stated at the outset. Oftentimes, one or more of these elements are not explicitly stated, making your job more difficult.
2. What is the proposed solution? This is also called the hypothesis or idea. This is the proposed answer to the research question. There should also be an answer to the question why is it believed that this solution will work, and be better than previous solutions? There should also be a discussion about how the solution is achieved (designed and implemented) or is at least achievable.
3. What is the work’s evaluation of the proposed solution? An idea alone is usually not adequate for publication of a research paper. This is the concrete engagement of the research question. What argument, implementation, and/or experiment makes the case for the value of the ideas? What benefits or problems are identified?
4. What is your analysis of the identified problem, idea and evaluation? Is this a good idea? What flaws do you perceive in the work? What are the most interesting points made? What are the most controversial ideas or points made? For work that has practical implications, you also want to ask: Is this really going to work, who would want it, what it will take to give it to them, and when might it become a reality?
5. What are the contributions? The contributions in a paper may be many and varied. Beyond the insights on the research question, a few additional possibilities include: ideas, software, experimental techniques, or an area survey.
6. What are future directions for this research? Not only what future directions do the authors identify, but what ideas did you come up with while reading the paper? Sometimes these may be identified as shortcomings or other critiques in the current work.
7. What questions are you left with? What questions would you like to raise in an open discussion of the work? What do you find confusing or difficult to understand? By taking the time to list several, you will be forced to think more deeply about the work.
8. What is your take-away message from this paper? Sum up the main implication of the paper from your perspective. This is useful for very quick review and refreshing your memory. It also forces you to try to identify the essence of the work.