Thread by @TivadarDanka

Reading research papers is a skill in itself.

I learned it the hard way. After reading hundreds of articles, I figured out the methods of learning and extracting information the simplest way.

Here is how.

🧵 👇🏽

Regardless of fields, most well-written papers have a similar structure:

What is the problem?
🠓
What are the previous works?
🠓
What did previous works miss?
🠓
What is the main result?
🠓
Why does it work?
🠓
How it compares to others?
🠓
What are its limitations?

However, research papers are not meant to be read linearly.

There are several levels of understanding:

knowing
1. how to use the result,
2. when to use it,
3. why and how does it work,
4. and how to improve it.

Depending on your goal, the reading paths might differ.

When starting out with a paper, you don't need to read everything in one go. You don't even need to follow the order of the sections.

Get the big picture

In the first reading, aim to get a clear picture of

🔹 what is the problem (introduction section),
🔹 what is the solution (the main result),
🔹 and its potential shortcomings (the conclusion/discussion section).

With these, you are ready to use the result.

Now you are ready to move towards a deeper understanding. Focus on

🔹 What other solutions are there?
🔹 What are they lacking?
🔹 How do they compare with the authors' solution?

These require more mental effort, but it will be easier after the first read.

Note that for this, you still don't need to read the whole paper.

If a section doesn't answer these questions (like methods and proofs), you can skip it for now.

This way, you can focus on the information you really need to piece the puzzle together.

To reproduce the result and even improve on it, you have to

🔹 understand why the solution works (methods section and proofs),
🔹 and read the previous works if necessary.

If you don't want to do further research, don't feel bad for skipping these.

In case you do want to do further research, the process starts over at this point.

(Either you read on subsequent works or previous results to see how others attempted to solve this problem.)