You would like to know how to read papers fast and effectively but you keep facing one of these challenges?
- The papers are hard to understand and only about 10% of the information sticks with you?
- You’re not sure what to look for in the papers to gather input for your own research paper?
- You have difficulty prioritizing which papers you should even read
Then be my guest for the next 10 minutes.
As a doctoral student, I deal with scientific papers every day. When I’m not writing one myself, I’m reading one. But not just any paper. I have a system.
If you read a scientific paper from beginning to end, it’s a rather suboptimal use of your time. Especially if you want to produce your own scientific work.
My system gives you 3 steps to follow on how to read scientific papers from now on – so that you can really make the most of your time and build knowledge pragmatically.
How to Read Papers Fast and Effectively
Every year, more than 2.5 million scientific papers are published worldwide (NCSES, 2019).
2.5 million!
There’s no time to read them all. That’s why it’s so important to approach the task with a plan.
You need to know exactly how to find the right scientific papers that are relevant to you and your work.
In addition, you need the right reading technique so that you don’t have to struggle through a scientific paper for hours just to extract a single definition.
And finally, you need a system to collect, process, and organize your knowledge so that you don’t forget everything a day later.
When you’re working on your scientific project, you’ll have a wealth of text passages, quotes, and results at your fingertips that you can use to beef up your current research or introduction.
Let’s go!
Step #1: Selecting relevant scientific papers
Okay, first of all, you need to accept that your time is limited – and so is the number of scientific papers you can read.
If you’re working on your thesis, you only have a couple of weeks or months, of which no more than one third should be spent on your literature review.
Let’s say you’re writing an undergraduate thesis and have the capacity to read 30 papers in addition to the method books you need to read. With these 3 steps, you can determine your top 30.
Create a reading list in the form of a table.
Conduct your literature search and collect all papers that appear relevant at first glance.
Abstract screening: Read all abstracts and decide which papers make it to the top 30 reading list based on the abstracts.
This step is also important in systematic literature reviews. Now you can start reading your top 30 reading list. The remaining papers will be neglected.
Step #2: The right reading technique to read papers fast
A (in my opinion) wrong approach on how to read papers fast and effectively would be to start with the first paper and work through it from beginning to end.
First, approach the paper with a paper screening:
Read the introduction, methods chapter, and conclusion.
Why?
These parts of a scientific paper are what I call meta-building blocks.
They are not purely content-based sections, but report one level higher, or “above” the contents. By reading these 3 sections, you will obtain the following information:
- Context
- Motivation
- Research problem
- The method that was used
- Main findings and contributions
- A summary of the most important results
- Contributions
If you now realize that you want to get more out of this paper, selectively decide to read additional chapters.
- For definitions: Read the literature review.
- For interest in theory: Read the theoretical background.
- To learn more about the scientific discourse on this topic: Read the discussion.
- For methodological questions and inspiration: Read the results.
Different papers can be useful in very different ways. You need to define the goal you have when reading a paper.
This is called selective reading.
You must allow yourself to skip large parts that do not contribute to you reaching your goal.
In a science podcast I regularly listen to, an author was recently a guest who had mathematically solved a theoretical problem in one of his papers. Since the reviewers wanted these elaborate calculations in the results section, he was now unsure whether this would deter many readers.
He himself then called on readers to simply skip the results section because it does not necessarily contribute to understanding the paper.
So even authors of papers want you to skip certain parts instead of loosing you as a reader somewhere in the middle.
Step #3: Create your own excerpt system
Creating an excerpt system is an important step in effectively managing and organizing the information you gather from scientific papers.
The basic goals of paper-reading are to understand the context, motivation, research problem, the method used, and the main results of the paper.
But you also want to have the contents ready to be cited or paraphrased for your own text.
To achieve this, you should create an entry in your excerpt document for each of the goals you have while reading papers.
Excerpts are extracts from scientific texts that you copy for direct quotes and paraphrase for indirect quotes. You can also add your own thoughts, notes, and interpretations to these extracts.
There are different ways to organize your excerpts:
- You can organize them within your reference management software. This has the advantage of having them readily available where you manage your references.
- Alternatively, you can create a system of individual tables and save them in a folder structure, e.g. in Google Drive, to organize your acquired knowledge by topic.
- Or you can create a huge Excel sheet with separate pages for each paper, so you have everything at your fingertips in one file.
Each system has its advantages and disadvantages, but the important thing is that you have a system that works for you.
It also depends on your working style and the software tools you use. Some people prefer to collect everything on paper and use pens and markers. This may not be as efficient, but it can be a good way to consolidate the information you gather.
#Bonus Tipp: Do not read papers on computer screens
Since we do most of our work on our computer, we also very likely read papers on our computer. If we believe the author Maryanne Wolf, who was a Professor for education at the University of California, we should immediately stop doing this.
In her work she explains that the way we read on screens is different from reading on paper or kindle. (By the way, reading on iPads counts as a computer screen). On those blue-light screens, our brain tends to skim read. Because that is what we do when we consume content on those devices.
Scientists found that, while reading on computer screens, our eyes follow z-patterns, jumping from one word to another while skipping large parts of the content. If you want to read papers effectively and retain the information, this is not good.
Reading on paper, in contrast, gives our brain the signal to focus on the text and avoid skim reading. So either you print your reading list on paper or, which would be a more sustainable option, get a large e-reader such as a kindle scribe* or a ReMarkable 2.
It makes reading papers much more fun!
*partner link