Vrinda Nair Profile picture
Doctoral Candidate in Physics @Concordia • Biotech Engineer • Poet • Science Communicator • Student Fellow at Concordia Applied AI (AI2) Institute

Jul 11, 2022, 14 tweets

How I search and read scientific papers now…

A 🧵

After trying many methods of reading research papers effectively, I have now (at least) settled on this format.

@PhDVoice @ThePhDPlace @PhD_Genie @OpenAcademics #AcademicChatter #AcademicTwitter #scicomm #STEM

I think it's just 4 step method! At first, it may feel time-consuming but once you get a grip on it then it's quite easy.

1.I first start by searching for the main topic that I am working on -- #AntibioticResistance in @OK_Maps. Now “Open Knowledge Maps” creates a visual knowledge map of the topic you're searching for. Also, lets you know if a paper has open access.

Sample:

Sample:

2.Then, I select a few papers and then head towards @Inciteful_xyz to build a network of papers and for literature connects.

I. Search for your main paper to build a network

Sample:

II. Select seed papers and create your network and filter out important papers. Also, you can save (seed papers) directly into Zotero.

Sample:

III. Your search result will also show-- Recent papers by the top 100 authors and The most important recent papers

Sample:

IV: Along with other data like -- Top authors and Journals

Sample:

For literature connects (especially for interdisciplinary research it's such a great tool)-- search for two main papers and get a detailed and filtered-out map.

Sample:

Sample:

3.Now, I head over to @scholarcy (they also have chrome extension) where you make flashcards. These flashcards are tiny breakdowns of the entire paper that highlights important parts of the paper.

4.Science research assistant: While reading a paper, we often come across various terms, and methods, of anything which we are not familiar with. I use, the particular chrome extension called--

Science research assistant which helps to find a word or about anything which you need further reading. As soon as you select a word, it opens in 5 different tabs and lets you know the latest papers, news and web searches.

Note: I do highlight important sentences or methods in the pdf and save them. To use them later if I am presenting or just to refer back.

Anyways, I hope these points turn out to be useful for you.

Thank you for reading!

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