This is a record of my learning experience on how to read an academic paper, based on Mu Li’s insights.
An academic paper typically consists of six sections: title, abstract, introduction, method, experiment and conclusion.
First Pass: Start by reading the title, abstract, and conclusion. This step helps determine the paper’s objective. Additionally, the conclusion often aligns with the abstract and provides concrete experimental data to the answer the research questions posed in the abstract. Figures and tables in the methods and experiment sections may also offer useful insights.
After the first pass, assess the paper’ quality to decide whether to proceed.
Second Pass: Read each section of the paper while skipping content that is difficult to understand. Additionally, identify interesting citations that may be worh further exploration.
After the second pass, you should have a general understanding of the paper’s methodology.
Third Pass: Delve into the paper’s details. Try to mentally reconstruct the paper’s structure and reasoning. Imagine yourself facing the challenges discussed in the paper–what approach would you propose to address them?
In the third pass, understand the detail of the paper. You can reconstruct this paper in you mind. You can attempt to resolve the chanllenges in the paper by yourself in you mind.