How to read a research paper?

It is important that you learn to read research papers critically. 

However, if you are looking for a project topic and are hard pressed for time here are some tips on reading.

• Read the title. (What is the paper about?)

• Read the abstract. (Should give you a concise overview of the paper.)

• Read the introduction. (Look for motivations, relation to other work, and a more detailed overview.)

• Look at the structure of the paper. (What do the remaining sections address? How do they fit together?)

• Read the previous/related work section. (How does this work relate? What is new or different about this work?)

• Read the conclusions. (What were their results?)

• Read the body of the paper. You may want to skip over all the equations and not lay too much stress on the terminology.  Try to just get an idea about what's the concept discussed in the paper. Try to get the big picture and don't go into details. Its not important at this stage to understand the algorithm rather try to understand what are the inputs and output of the algorithm. Skip the parts you don't understand.

• The references won’t mean much to you if you’re not familiar with the subject topic. Sometimes important parts of the work may be contained in the references, particularly in conference papers since space is limited.

Once you have decided the project topic, you MUST read the related papers critically.

Questions to ask while reading a research paper critically

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you read and some tips on reading. Read the paper 3 times atleast.

• What problem(s) are they solving? Why are these problems important?

• What did they really do? (as opposed to what the authors say or imply they did)

• What is the contribution of the work? (i.e. what is interesting or new?)

• What methods are they using?

• Would you have solved the problem differently?

• Do all the pieces of their work fit together logically?

• What were the results? Did they do what they set out to do?

• What assumptions are they making?

Once you are reading critically create a list of questions about parts that you don't understand about parts where you question their solution/proof/methods/results. List comparisons of this paper to other related work with which you are familiar. The references are very important when you are researching a topic—they point you to related research as well as the research upon which the current paper builds upon. Sooner or later, you will come across something that you don’t understand. What can you do? You should try to figure out what it is and how it is being used (even though you still don’t understand it). If you are somewhat lost on a particular paper, and sometimes if you are not,  write down questions you have about the paper. Perhaps the paper was vague on key issues, or ignored issues that you think are important. For further reading, see the references! Fill out the WORD file and email it to me when you done.