1. Three-Pass Approach
Key idea: read a paper up tp 3 passes, each pass accomplishes specific goals
1.1. The First Pass
quick scan, decide whether you need to do any more passes, take about 5-10 minutes
- read the title and abstract, introduction carefully
- read section headings
- read the conclusions
- glance the references
After reading, you should get five Cs
- category
- context
- correctness
- contributions
- clarity
1.2. The Second Pass
read the paper with greater care, but ignore the details such as proofs, take up to 1 hour,
- look carefully at the figures, diagrams
- mark relevant unread references
After this pass, able to grasp the content.
Sometimes you can not understand the paper if there are some unfamiliar terminology
1.3. The Third Pass
Key: try to virtually re-implement the paper: making the same assumptions, re-create the work
- identify and challenge every assumption in every statement
- think about how you yourself would present such a idea
This pass would take 4-5 hours for beginners.
2. Literature Survey
- Use an academic search such as Google Scholar, find 3-5 recent papers in the area
- Do one pass on each paper, find a thumbnail summary of the recent work
- Find shared citations (key papers) and repeated author names in the bibliography.
- Go to the websites of the key researchers an find the top conferences in that field
- Go to the websites of the top conferences and find high-quality related work
- these papers and key papers constitute the first version of your survey