Reading research papers effectively can seem daunting at first, but can be mastered with practice. To really understand an academic paper, expect to spend time reading and thinking about it. Before you start reading, it helps to explicitly think about (i) what you want to get from the paper, and (ii) where information is usually located in the paper. This article outlines how to extract the gist of a paper, how to read critically, and how the paper can spark creative thinking in the research area.
A full careful read of a single paper takes about an hour if you want to go deep, and maybe 30-45 minutes if you leverage an LLM to support your learning. Weeks 1, 3, 5, and 6 each contain a book chapter (boyd, Kraut, Friedman, Gillespie), which are longer and denser than typical academic papers, just to flag where to think about time management. Also note that these chapters do not have Methods and Results sections, and so the structure below does not map directly. For this more theoretical work, find the central claim and the examples supporting it; the argument is the contribution.
Generally, papers from the domain of Social Computing (and HCI more generally) have a very similar structure:
Abstract: brief, high-level understanding of what problem the paper aims to solve, their approach, and main contributions and/or results.
Introduction: describes the motivation for the paper, and briefly outlines the research questions, approach or solution, and main contributions
Related Work: evaluates all comparative work and solutions in the research area and related areas in detail
Body of the paper:
Solution: describes the authors’ solution/approach to the problem in detail, or
Method: the design of the study to either gather user needs or evaluate the solution with the procedure and apparatus
Results/Findings: presents major results or insights of the study.
Discussion: recap of results, discussion of how the results/solution compares with existing related work, limitations, future work, and main contributions of the paper
References: a good place to find further reading for related work if you want to read more in the area.
Not all papers have these exact sections, and also not always in this order. Information may be repeated across sections with different amounts of detail. Some papers are more theoretical and pull from different disciplinary traditions.
My advice: Read the title, abstract, and introduction. Then start skimming. Read the headers and subheaders, and then study the figures and figure captions. Look for a summary of the findings and insights, typically at the start of the discussion. Then start to explore the questions below. Also, take 5 minutes to read Keshav's hints and Bill Griswold's advice on how to read engineering papers. I especially like the part on note taking! Five lines of notes go a long way: the problem, the core concept in your own words, how they studied it, one thing you'd push back on, and one connection to another paper or your project. These notes will also be useful for the Group Quizzes that ask about the relationships between papers.
Read a paper not just to extract information, but to also critically reflect on the assumptions, methods, and results. One way to start thinking critically is by questioning the paper. Here are the 5 fundamental questions to consider when reading, including the sections where you’re likely to find the answers to these questions:
What are the authors' motivations and rationale for doing this work? (see the paper's Introduction)
What is the proposed solution / approach? (see the paper's brief description in the Introduction and a detailed version in the body of the paper)
What is the work's evaluation of the proposed solution? (see if the paper has an Evaluation or Results section, also read the discussion)
What are the contributions? (typically these are outlined in the Introduction, and discussed in detail in the Discussion section)
What are future directions for this research? (see the Discussion section)
Now going beyond the critical read, think about the research with a creative lens. Try answering these questions and taking notes as you go through the paper:
What are the good ideas in this paper? Do these ideas have other applications or extensions that the authors might not have thought of? Can the results be generalized further? Are there possible improvements that might make important practical differences?
How would you approach the same problem statement? If you researched the same problem, how would you go about it? Or, what would be the next thing you would do research on to build on this work?
How does this paper relate to other papers? Spend some time looking at papers that explore the same problem in a different way, or apply the solution in a different context. Reflect on how this paper relates and what factors define their differences.
How does this paper relate to broader themes? Think about how each paper relates to broader themes in the course, as well as how it applies to your evolving class project.
What strategies have you developed for reading papers? We would love to hear your methods! Please share your advice on Slack or during class. It will help us all read papers more effectively.
Griswold, W G. How to read an Engineering Research Paper. https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~wgg/CSE210/howtoread.html.
Mitzenmacher, Michael. How to Read a Research Paper. www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/ReadPaper.pdf.
Keshav, S. (2007). How to read a paper. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 37(3), 83-84.