How To Read A Paper Quickly & Effectively | Easy Research Reading Technique — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00hey everyone and welcome back to my
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8. 0:10this video
9. 0:11a topic that i get asked quite a bit and
10. 0:13it's about reading research papers and
11. 0:15sort of whether you need to read from
12. 0:17the start to the end in every single
13. 0:19detail and the answer to that
14. 0:20is absolutely not and today i'm going to
15. 0:24go through exactly how you want to read
16. 0:26a research paper
17. 0:27um in about i mean 15 to 20 minutes
18. 0:30depending on how much detail you want to
19. 0:31go into
20. 0:32um so i've been reading on notability
21. 0:34it's a great app where you are able to
22. 0:36import a pdf highlight scribble write on
23. 0:40it without having to actually print
24. 0:41anything out so it's a great resource
25. 0:43and i'd highly recommend you to download
26. 0:44and take a look
27. 0:45as you can see just unwrapped the pen um
28. 0:48and there's some asmr for you right
29. 0:50there
30. 0:50by reading research papers like this
31. 0:51you're enabling yourself to have sort of
32. 0:53a disciplined approach
33. 0:55and prevents you from drowning in the
34. 0:56details before you even get a bird's-eye
35. 0:58view
36. 0:59every paper does not need to be read in
37. 1:01the depth that
38. 1:02it presents itself in so it's important
39. 1:04to be able to quickly skim through the
40. 1:06important details before you decide to
41. 1:08dive in and read
42. 1:10the whole paper so starting off you want
43. 1:13to
44. 1:13look at the title of the paper as this
45. 1:15is probably the best
46. 1:17um biggest selling point and the most
47. 1:18important few words where you might have
48. 1:21some keywords that are included and give
49. 1:23you an idea of sort of
50. 1:24the topic that's about to um be
51. 1:26discussed you can see here i'm putting
52. 1:28out
53. 1:28um the method and i'm also pulling out
54. 1:31the sort of what the result is and you
55. 1:32then want to move on and look at the
56. 1:34abstract now the abstract is usually
57. 1:36written in a few
58. 1:37kind of sections and it's quite
59. 1:38consistently written like this so you
60. 1:40can just pull out these bits of
61. 1:41information
62. 1:42the first is the background sort of the
63. 1:44why why is it that this paper is
64. 1:46um written what it what is the gap in
65. 1:48literature and the gap in research that
66. 1:50it is trying to fill
67. 1:51you then want to look at the methods um
68. 1:53just quickly is it an animal study
69. 1:55is it a human study and then you want to
70. 1:58look at the results quickly
71. 1:59and the discussion or the conclusion so
72. 2:01there's sort of a couple parts that
73. 2:03you you almost always have in the
74. 2:06abstract
75. 2:06and you can very quickly just pick them
76. 2:08out and again at this point you can
77. 2:10decide well actually this isn't
78. 2:12something i'm interested in
79. 2:13or it is something that you're
80. 2:15interested in and you can keep on
81. 2:16reading from there
82. 2:18you then want to take a look at the
83. 2:21first and the last paragraph
84. 2:23of the introduction again this just
85. 2:26gives you a bit of a background
86. 2:28and helps you understand what the
87. 2:32hypothesis is and helps you understand
88. 2:34what the research aims are
89. 2:36of this particular paper and the first
90. 2:39paragraph because that usually gives you
91. 2:40the sort of general background
92. 2:42and the last paragraph because typically
93. 2:44the last paragraph tells you
94. 2:46um their sort of intention and kind of
95. 2:48summarizes
96. 2:49what's to come and again it allows you
97. 2:52to sort of
98. 2:53understand why the paper's being written
99. 2:56what their
100. 2:56research aims are and their hypothesis
101. 2:58is and sort of a summary of
102. 3:00their methods as well to come it's quite
103. 3:03nice it's definitely
104. 3:04their last paragraph is something that i
105. 3:05always look at even if i don't always
106. 3:07look at the um
107. 3:08the first paragraph you then want to
108. 3:11move on and take a look at
109. 3:13the subsection headings of the results
110. 3:16now this might seem a bit random because
111. 3:18the methods come next but the methods
112. 3:20aren't really important
113. 3:22unless you're looking to copy the paper
114. 3:25and
115. 3:26and do the study in a slightly different
116. 3:28way
117. 3:29the methods are not really that
118. 3:30important so i'll jump straight to the
119. 3:31results and i look at the titles of the
120. 3:34subsections and typically the titles
121. 3:37are um a quick snippet of the result
122. 3:40that's to come
123. 3:41so usually what papers will do when
124. 3:44they're when
125. 3:45when they're writing up their results is
126. 3:46give you a quick sort of summary
127. 3:48in the title in the subtitles you don't
128. 3:51want to move on and look at the
129. 3:53conclusion now it might seem like you've
130. 3:55jumped quite far ahead but really at
131. 3:57this point you understand
132. 3:58what the results are you know what the
133. 4:00paper is trying to achieve and what
134. 4:01their research aims are so you can just
135. 4:03jump to the conclusion to get a quick
136. 4:04summary and as you can see it's a very
137. 4:06short summary of what this paper found
138. 4:08and to be honest you don't really need
139. 4:10to look beyond this point
140. 4:11especially if you're not looking at the
141. 4:13paper in too much depth
142. 4:14at this point you'll understand what
143. 4:16they've done how their paper fits into
144. 4:18the
145. 4:19literature and how their paper fits into
146. 4:21the research space
147. 4:23and their final kind of their unique
148. 4:25results and that's all you really need
149. 4:27to know at this point
150. 4:28but if you do want to go into more depth
151. 4:30you can look at
152. 4:31the results and kind of look at the
153. 4:33graphs or the tables or the figures or
154. 4:35whatever it is that you've got in front
155. 4:36of you
156. 4:37add a bit more depth and pick out some
157. 4:39significant
158. 4:40um results and this could be in the in
159. 4:42the form of a graph as you can see here
160. 4:44there's a particular um very significant
161. 4:47result
162. 4:47and you can just kind of take a look at
163. 4:49that pointing out and just remind
164. 4:50yourself to take a look at it in more
165. 4:51detail maybe later on
166. 4:53and again this kind of gives you an
167. 4:54overview of what this paper is showing
168. 4:57in a bit more depth and can allow you to
169. 4:59interpret that
170. 5:00interpret that for your own research you
171. 5:02then want to look at the limitations now
172. 5:04this paper is quite nice because it has
173. 5:05got its own little section for
174. 5:06limitations allow you to sort of
175. 5:08understand what the flaws were or what
176. 5:10some barriers and challenges were
177. 5:12that were faced by that particular study
178. 5:15and lastly and
179. 5:16but definitely not least i always try to
180. 5:18highlight a couple of
181. 5:20other references that may be cited in
182. 5:22this particular paper that i think are
183. 5:24interesting and that could be useful for
184. 5:26my own study
185. 5:27now there could be there might be a
186. 5:28paper where they referenced and they
187. 5:29said that this study has shown x y and z
188. 5:32and we're basing our study on this and i
189. 5:34might i might find that really
190. 5:35interesting i might want to look
191. 5:36at that myself tend to highlight those
192. 5:38papers and try to take a look at it
193. 5:39at a later date and that's it you're
194. 5:42pretty much done now that wasn't very
195. 5:44very long at all so starting off always
196. 5:46look at the title
197. 5:47pull out your keywords then look at your
198. 5:49abstract identify
199. 5:51um sort of the results and the methods
200. 5:53then you want to read the first and the
201. 5:54last paragraph
202. 5:55of your introduction or the literature
203. 5:57review
204. 5:59you then want to take a look at the
205. 6:00results and just quickly skim through
206. 6:02the titles together to kind of gauge
207. 6:05what what
208. 6:06the research is that they've actually
209. 6:07found and what the results are
210. 6:09and sort of the key results if you like
211. 6:11um you then want to read the conclusion
212. 6:13very quickly just to summarize uh and
213. 6:15get a summary of
214. 6:16what the paper actually found um and
215. 6:20then if you want to go into more detail
216. 6:21look at the results and try to identify
217. 6:23and pull out some key results that you
218. 6:24think could be
219. 6:25applicable and could be interesting for
220. 6:27you and your study
221. 6:29and then like i said in this case we
222. 6:30have got some limitations here so that
223. 6:32could be something to look at as well
224. 6:34just to for contextualizing the study
225. 6:37and understanding what the challenges
226. 6:38were
227. 6:38and the last but not least pull out a
228. 6:40few references that you can
229. 6:42take on and keep on reading and to
230. 6:45understand a bit more about the context
231. 6:47and about a bit more about
232. 6:49this particular research field and what
233. 6:51else there is out there
234. 6:52now what i've described is sort of a
235. 6:53first pass where you're just
236. 6:55understanding the theoretical basis
237. 6:57you're understanding kind of what kind
238. 6:58of paper this is
239. 7:00and what contribution this particular
240. 7:02study has um contributed to
241. 7:04their research field and if you do want
242. 7:06to go into more depth
243. 7:08then of course you do have to look into
244. 7:09more depth as to the methods and sort of
245. 7:11the exact results maybe the stats and
246. 7:13the figures but really for most papers i
247. 7:16would say for sort of 75
248. 7:17of papers that you read this would
249. 7:19suffice you've actually taken out quite
250. 7:21a lot of information already
251. 7:22just from doing a quick overview as i
252. 7:25have done
253. 7:26so as i mentioned earlier skillshare is
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328. 9:32more from me i hope that this video was
329. 9:33helpful
330. 9:34and leave me your comments down below as
331. 9:36to how you read papers
332. 9:37do you also um do a similar technique as
333. 9:40me or
334. 9:41are you someone who likes to read every
335. 9:43word to word
336. 9:44don't do that and i'll see you guys in
337. 9:46my next one okay
338. 9:48bye