#28 The 8 Steps to Efficiently Read Scientific Papers

Read time: 3 min.

How do some researchers go through lots of scientific publications so quickly?

Well, they probably have a reading system in place.

They read in a certain way, a systematic way, to extract valuable information from many publications. Here, I’m not talking about automatic summaries.

I want to share a simple and structured approach to help you get the most out of your reading.

When you find an interesting paper (Of course, you already read the title and abstract):

1. Identify Key Sections: Start with the introduction for background and research questions or jump to the 'Methods' and 'Results' sections for experiments and findings.

2. Deep Dive into Methods and Results: Understand how the research was done by reading the 'Methods' section, then interpret the data in the 'Results' section.

3. Analyze the Discussion/Conclusion: See how the results fit into what we currently know about the issue and their importance in the 'Discussion' or 'Conclusions' section. Also, keep an eye on ideas for future research.

4. Check References: Look at the references to find more resources and other potentially relevant papers that can improve your understanding.

5. Review Figures and Tables: Examine figures, tables, and appendices for data that supports the text.

6. Critical Analysis: Question the research methods, data interpretation, conclusions, and consider any biases.

7. The introduction: If not read yet, go back to the background information in the introduction. What’s the context? What are the research questions?

8. Taking notes: Keep the key message of the paper in your notes. I like to do this in EndNote for each important reference. This is useful when you want to recall the main message in your manuscript at the time of citation/referencing.

Initially, I was reading scientific articles like you read a book.

From start to finish. But this is not efficient.

Of course, we become more efficient readers with practice.

So read more often and try these steps. They can help you go through a lot of information quickly.

Happy reading!

That’s it for this week. Let us know in the comments if you think I missed anything or if you have any other suggestions.

As usual, if anything is unclear or if you need help with your research projects, please contact me and I will reply.

See you next Sunday!

Jamal

My favorite things this week

1. I’m back to work. Back to my environment and my routines. And I like that!

2. I’m preparing new pieces of content. I cannot wait to share them with you!