We all have to do it: read research papers. They can be jargon-y, long, confusing, and all in all an upsetting experience, but there’s no way around it.
First of all, let’s start by approaching this with a more positive mindset. Reading research papers can give us access to a bucketload of information that no other resource can provide. It is the most updated source on your favorite scientific topics, a Vogue magazine for the scientific world if you will. As such, reading them can be fun–but only if you know how. Now that we are a bit more optimistic about reading them, we can start with the first few steps.
- Realize you are not meant to understand it all. The people who have written this research paper have spent years on this topic. Years. They know every nook and cranny of this topic, in addition to the years of education they have compared to undergrads. It’s okay to be confused. Let that confusion sit within you and accept it. Give it room to grow. In all reality, if you aren’t confused that would be concerning. As Princeton students, we tend to love knowing it all, but when it comes to these papers, it’s best to appreciate the cluelessness instead.
- Read the abstract once, twice, 100,000 times. My biggest issue when reading a research paper is that I tend to lose sight of the main idea as I get deeper into the figures. As long as you keep referring back to the abstract every time things get a bit challenging, you will be able to reorient yourself properly.
- Look over data and understand the figures. The figures will provide you with the most wealth of information, so taking your time with them will help you understand everything else quite well. Don’t be afraid of looking up the type of plot they are using in the paper and how to read it. I’ve learned so many ways to represent a few dots on a graph; you’d really be surprised.
- Highlight! Highlight what you recognize or what you think captures the essence of the paper perfection. Highlight something interesting or something confusing. Papers can be long and highlighting can keep you engaged during most of it.
- Keep a dictionary handy, but also do not rely on it too much. As always, be comfortable with being confused. It’s a sign of being smart after all.
Hopefully these tips will help make the reading process easier. I don’t like providing a concrete step by step because people process information differently. I, for example, love to go in systemic order when I read a paper, while my friend likes skipping around from the data to the methods and back again. You have to find your own method too. I hope that while you try to discover it, these tips make the path to your tailor-made method a little more bearable.
— Haya Elamir, Natural Sciences Correspondent
