How to Read a Paper阅读笔记

科研者应每年花费几百个小时读论文

读论文的原因

• to review them for a conference or a class,
• to keep current in their field,
• for a literature survey of a new field

3遍法读论文

1. gives you a general idea about the paper
2. lets you grasp the paper’s content, but not its details.
3. helps you understand the paper in depth

第一遍

• 5到10分钟
• get a bird's-eye view
• 当你写论文时，假设你的读者只会读这一遍

步骤

1. Carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction

2. Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else

3. Read the conclusions

4. Glance over the references, mentally ticking off the ones you've already read

读后思考

1. Category: What type of paper is this? A measurement paper? An analysis of an existing system? A description of a research prototype?
2. Context: Which other papers is it related to? Which theoretical bases were used to analyze the problem?
3. Correctness: Do the assumptions appear to be valid?
4. Contributions: What are the paper’s main contributions?
5. Clarity: Is the paper well written?

不读第二遍的理由

• the paper doesn’t interest you,
• you don’t know enough about the area to understand the paper
• the authors make invalid assumptions

第二遍

• 不超过1小时
• be able to summarize the main thrust, with supporting evidence, to someone else.
• read the paper with greater care, but ignore details such as proofs
• appropriate for a paper in which you are interested, but does not lie in your research speciality

步骤

1. Look carefully at the figures and tables. Are the axes properly labeled? Are results shown with error bars, so that conclusions are statistically significant?
2. mark relevant unread references

如果还没懂可以

• set the paper aside, hoping you don’t need to understand the material to be successful in your career,
• return to the paper later, perhaps after reading background material or
• persevere and go on to the third pass

第三遍

• 新手4到5小时，熟练者大约1小时
• virtually re-implement the paper
• be able to reconstruct the entire structure of the paper from memory and identify its strong and weak points
• identify not only a paper’s innovations, but also its hidden failings and assumptions

方法

• identify and challenge every assumption in every statement
• think about how you yourself would present a particular idea.
• jot down ideas for future work

文献调研

在不熟悉的领域读几十篇论文

1. find three to five recent papers in the area. Do one pass on each paper. read their related work sections. 如果发现了最近的一篇综述文章，直接去看，否则进入第2步
2. find shared citations and repeated author names in the bibliography
3. Download the key papers and set them aside.
4. Then go to the websites of the key researchers and see where they’ve published recently. 通常这些期刊或会议就是该领域内顶级的出版物
5. go to the website for these top conferences and look through their recent proceedings. identify recent high-quality related work.
6. Make two passes through these papers. If they all cite a key paper that you did not find earlier, obtain and read it

注意

• 对整体有所了解前不要陷入细节
• estimate the amount of time required to review a set of papers
• adjust the depth of paper evaluation depending on my needs and how much time I have

References

Keshav, S. (2007). How to read a paper. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 37(3), 83-84.