Introduction #

Efficiently read a paper is a critical but rarely taught skill.

Describes the three-pass approach and its use in doing a literature survey.

The three-pass approach #

The first pass gives you a general idea about the paper. The second pass lets you grasp the paper’s content, but not its details. The third pass helps you understand the paper in depth.

The first pass #

A quick scan to get a bird’s-eye view of the paper, take about five to ten minutes:

• carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction
• read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else
• read the conclusions
• glance over the references, mentally ticking off the ones you’ve already read

At the end of the first pass, you should be able to answer the 5Cs:

• Category: what type of paper is this?
• Context: which other papers is it related to? which theoretical bases were used?
• Correctness: Do the assumptions appear to be valid?
• Contributions: what are the paper’s main contributions?
• Clarity: Is the paper well written

think as a reviewer: if a reviewer cannot understand the gist after one pass, the paper may be rejected.

The second pass #

read the paper with greater...