KeshavS ::: How to Read a Paper

Table of Contents

1. 3-pass method

3-pass method is an iterative method of literature reading.

1.1. 1st pass

In the 1st pass, read briefly, only the special prints and structured conetents:

  • abstract,
  • document sturcture, headlines
  • conclusions
  • introductions

Following the 1st pass, reader could decide whether to read further or discard right away. If further, enter 2nd pass

1.2. 2nd pass

In the 2nd pass, jot down arguments. specifically, if combine with highlight + comment method, this is where you do the highlight and jot down comments, extract small clips of meaningful/important sentences/ideas

after this pass, according to your expertice and importance of paper, and your objectives reading the paper, there’s different follow ups:

put it aside and never touch it again
when you think you have enough understanding of this work or you don’t think it is worth your time looking into it (bad writing, insignificant idea) Would be a common bin for experienced readers with priorities; would be more of a blind reckoning for readers inexperienced in the field
revisit it after finish reading backgrounds

often because you can’t understand the paper because you don’t understand a term/concept used in it, or the author assumed knowledge of a line of work that you have never heard of.

This is dangerous as it is likely you will recursively read those background readings background as well, and typically a paper have more than 20 refs - you can’t handle 400 papers just to understand one.

1.3. 3rd pass

mentally reconstruct the paper

Backlinks

text material processing method

Systematic approach to process text materials such as papers, articles, manuals, documentaitons or books.

Here’s a script to insert multiple org-roam nodes 

(defun hermanhel-strings-to-hash (strings)
  "Convert a list of STRINGS to a hash table with the strings as keys."
  (let ((hash (make-hash-table :test 'equal)))
    (dolist (str strings)
      (puthash str t hash))
    hash))

(defun hermanhel-org-roam-insert-multiple-nodes-as-list ()
  (interactive)
(let
    (
     (candidates (hermanhel-strings-to-hash (org-roam--get-titles)))
     (selected-nodes (citar--select-multiple "References: " candidates))
     )
(dolist (title selected-nodes)
      (insert "+ " "[[roam:" title "]]" "\n")
      )
)
)

my research system

(reading paper)

Paper reading is handled with 3-pass method described in KeshavS :: How to Read a Paper.

my research system

(literature review/survey)

literature review/survey is handled with the literature survey method described in KeshavS :: How to Read a Paper

Author: Linfeng He

Created: 2024-04-03 Wed 19:37