While you are learning how to write a (research) paper, we need you to know how to read one, particularly because you will heavily rely on this skill while doing research. At some point during your research, it is inevitable that you'll find yourself reading so many research papers that it feels like you're drowning in an ocean of papers. If done inefficiently, this may cost you an unlimited amount of time. Imagine that even when done efficiently, you may sometimes spend hours on a single paper. Thus, it is more than important to know how to read a paper most efficiently.
This skill is sometimes overlooked in many education systems, even though reading papers is fairly common.
By this point, you should be aware that research papers are inherently and fundamentally different from other forms of academic writing. Such papers are packed with information, and unlike normal textbooks or popular articles, research papers shouldn’t always be read linearly from start to finish. Sometimes, you would be able to extract information more quickly if you had a better and more efficient reading strategy.
A method that may be helpful is called the three-pass method, representing a systematic approach you can use to maximize your efficiency. While what I will describe can be done with other approaches, I have made it compatible with the three-pass method to make it more convenient to understand and to later actually teach. Structuring it in this method would make it much better, as each pass has a specific purpose while building on the previous one; this is crucial for you to decide whether or not to invest more time in the paper.
The very first thing you need to verify before reading is to determine whether or not this paper is credible. Refer to Navigating Trusted and Scholarly Sources.
To make the most of a paper and be as efficient and quick as possible, the process starts even before reading. Directly before starting to read it, clarify to yourself why you are reading. As San Jose State University advises, you may ask:
When you answer the first question, you will have an idea about the second question’s answer. You may be reading a paper to support your argument or analysis, or as an assignment your ARPL mentor gave to you. Knowing your objective with the paper will give you better guidance on how you need to engage with it. Lastly, for the final question, doing this quick reflection on what you already know about the topic and what you hope to learn will also be handy in providing a clearer direction as you are about to read.
The first pass is just to give you a quick, high-level understanding, where you are doing a bird’s-eye view in only a few minutes. It’s overly important as it helps you decide whether to proceed with a more detailed reading or not. During the first pass, you are mainly reading the title, abstract, and scanning the section headings. As you have already learned, the title and abstract are your “gateway” to a paper, where you get the main background, context, and contribution from them. You will get a quick yet clear idea of the paper's main findings and methodology. Further, scanning the section headings, and perhaps the subsection headings, will give you a better understanding of the paper’s structure. Through doing this, you will understand the mental map the author built their argument and study on.
At this stage, after doing what we said, you may proceed to read the introduction and conclusion. The introduction will clearly set the problem being addressed while giving you more information on the background and relevance of the study. The conclusion is also very important, as it quickly summarizes the main findings and their implications. Often, as mentioned, the conclusion is also where you may find the authors discussing future research directions, which can be very valuable for your own work.
To know whether or not you have finished the level of understanding this pass gives you, you may see if you can answer the following quick yet fundamental questions: