DON'T DO THAT: read the article from the beginning to end; it's a waste of time!
READ A PAPER IN TWO-PHASE PROCESS:
Phase 1: surveying the article! to see if it worthes a lot of time to read it.
How to "survey" the article:
- feel free to stop reading the article at any point.
- read the title and keywords
- abstract
- conclusions
Phase 2: read the article
How to read the article:
- look at the tables and figures
- This is really what was done in the work. This does not take much time so it is worth looking at before really getting into the details which will slow down the reading.
- read the introduction
- This is the background needed and why the study was done.
- read the results and discussion
- This is the heart of the paper.
- read the experiment.
- This is how they did the work. You only get to this point if you are really interested and need to understand exactly what was done to better understand the meaning of the data and its interpretation.
- write some notes to avoid rereading.
The faintest writing is better than the best memory! Translated from a Chinese saying
when writing your first paper: these notes help you to know which articles are values reread. Put these notes in another way, not just record it in your paper.