How to read a paper

原文：http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/07/paper-reading.pdf

  (to be translated...)

 The key idea is that you should read the paper in up to three passes, instead of starting at the beginning and plowing your way to the end. Each pass accomplishes speci c goals and builds upon the previous pass: The f irst pass gives you a general idea about the paper. The second pass lets you grasp the paper's content, but not its details. The third pass helps you understand the paper in depth.

第一遍：    

The first pass is a quick scan to get a bird's-eye view of the paper. You can also decide whether you need to do any more passes. This pass should take about ve to ten minutes and consists of the following steps:
1. Carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction
2. Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else
3. Glance at the mathematical content (if any) to determine the underlying theoretical foundations

4. Read the conclusions
5. Glance over the references, mentally ticking o the ones you've already read
At the end of the rst pass, you should be able to answer
the five Cs:
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?

     The fi rst pass is adequate for papers that aren't in your research area, but may someday prove relevant.

第二遍：

In the second pass, read the paper with greater care, but ignore details such as proofs. It helps to jot down the key
points, or to make comments in the margins, as you read.Dominik Grusemann from Uni Augsburg suggests that you
\note down terms you didn't understand, or questions you may want to ask the author." If you are acting as a paper
referee, these comments will help you when you are writing your review, and to back up your review during the program committee meeting.

第三遍：     

To fully understand a paper, particularly if you are reviewer, requires a third pass. The key to the third pass is to attempt to virtually re-implement the paper: that is, making the same assumptions as the authors, re-create the work. By comparing this re-creation with the actual paper, you can easily identify not only a paper's innovations, but also its hidden failings and assumptions. This pass requires great attention to detail. You should identify and challenge every assumption in every statement. Moreover, you should think about how you yourself would present a particular idea. This comparison of the actual with the virtual lends a sharp insight into the proof and presentation techniques in the paper and you can very likely add this to your repertoire of tools. During this pass, you should also jot down ideas for future work.

如何进行文献调研：

Paper reading skills are put to the test in doing a literature survey. This will require you to read tens of papers, perhaps
in an unfamiliar fi eld. What papers should you read? Here is how you can use the three-pass approach to help.
   First, use an academic search engine such as Google Scholar or CiteSeer and some well-chosen keywords to fi nd three tove recent highly-cited papers in the area. Do one pass on each paper to get a sense of the work, then read their related work sections. You will nd a thumbnail summary of the recent work, and perhaps, if you are lucky, a pointer to
a recent survey paper. If you can nd such a survey, you are done. Read the survey, congratulating yourself on your
good luck.

Otherwise, in the second step, nd shared citations and repeated author names in the bibliography. These are the
key papers and researchers in that area. Download the key papers and set them aside. Then go to the websites of the
key researchers and see where they've published recently. That will help you identify the top conferences in that field
because the best researchers usually publish in the top conferences.

The third step is to go to the website for these top conferences and look through their recent proceedings. A quick
scan will usually identify recent high-quality related work. These papers, along with the ones you set aside earlier, constitute the rst version of your survey. Make two passes through these papers. If they all cite a key paper that you
did not nd earlier, obtain and read it, iterating as necessary.