這是我在看論文時無意刷到的部落格推薦的一篇文章"How to Read a Paper"，教你怎麼樣看論文。對於研究生來說，看論文基本是日常，一篇論文十多二十頁，如何高效地讀論文確實非常重要，我也看了不少論文，有了一些體會，這篇文章介紹的方法值得參考。

原文來自https://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/07/paper-reading.pdf

這裡還發現了翻譯成中文的版本:https://wenku.baidu.com/view/8738405349d7c1c708a1284ac850ad02de8007c3.html

three-pass approach

Researchers spend a great deal of time reading research papers. However, this skill is rarely taught, leading to much wasted effort. This article outlines a practical and efficient three-pass method for reading research papers. I also describe how to use this method to do a literature survey.

key idea: read the paper in up to three passes instead of starting at the begining and plowing to the end(用三步法取代從頭讀到尾的方式)

• The first pass

  give you a general idea about the paper(對論文建立整體的認識)

• The second pass

  let you grasp the paper's content, but not its details(把握論文的內容而非細節)

• The third pass

  help you understand the paper in depth(深度理解論文)

The first pass

• The first pass is a quick scan to get a bird’s-eye view of the paper. You can also decide whether you need to do any more passes. This pass should take about five to ten minutes and consists of the following steps (鳥瞰論文並決定是否繼續閱讀，該步驟大概佔用5-10min
  )

1. Carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction(仔細閱讀標題,摘要和簡介)
2. Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else(閱讀章節和小節標題,忽略所有內容)
3. Glance at the mathematical content (if any) to determine the underlying theoretical foundations(瀏覽數學內容以確定潛在的理論基礎)
4. Read the conclusions(閱讀結論)
5. Glance over the references, mentally ticking off the ones you’ve already read(瀏覽參考文獻,勾選讀過的文章)

• At the end of the first pass, you should be able to answer the five Cs:(閱讀完第一遍,需要回答以下問題)

1. Category: What type of paper is this? A measurement paper? An analysis of an existing system? A description of a research prototype?(這篇論文的類別是什麼?)
2. Context: Which other papers is it related to? Which theoretical bases were used to analyze the problem?(這篇論文內容跟什麼相關,理論基礎是什麼?)
3. Correctness: Do the assumptions appear to be valid?(所有的假設都有效嗎?)
4. Contributions: What are the paper’s main contributions?(這篇論文的主要貢獻是什麼)
5. Clarity: Is the paper well written? (這篇論文是否簡潔明瞭)

The second pass

• In the second pass, read the paper with greater care, but ignore details such as proofs. It helps to jot down the key points, or to make comments in the margins, as you read.Dominik Grusemann from Uni Augsburg suggests that you note down terms you didn’t understand, or questions you may want to ask the author." If you are acting as a paper referee, these comments will help you when you are writing
  your review, and to back up your review during the program committee meeting. (稍微仔細閱讀第二遍,忽略一些細節如證明.記下關鍵點,在旁白評論有助於閱讀)

1. Look carefully at the figures, diagrams and other illustrations in the paper. Pay special attention to graphs. Are the axes properly labeled? Are results shown with
   error bars, so that conclusions are statistically significant? Common mistakes like these will separate rushed, shoddy work from the truly excellent. (仔細關注論文中的數字,圖示和插圖)
2. Remember to mark relevant unread references for further reading (this is a good way to learn more about the background of the paper) (標記未讀的參考文獻以進一步閱讀)

• The second pass should take up to an hour for an experienced reader. After this pass, you should be able to grasp the content of the paper. You should be able to summarize the main thrust of the paper, with supporting evidence, to someone else. This level of detail is appropriate for a paper in which you are interested, but does not lie in your research speciality(對於有經驗的讀者,第二遍要花一個小時。結束這一遍你應該抓住文章的內容並能夠將支援論文的論據總結給其他人。)

The third pass

To fully understand a paper, particularly if you are a reviewer, requires a third pass. The key to the third pass is to attempt to virtually re-implement the paper: that is,
making the same assumptions as the authors, re-create the work. By comparing this re-creation with the actual paper,you can easily identify not only a paper’s innovations, but also its hidden failings and assumptions. (第三遍論文的核心在於復現論文:建立與作者相同的假設,復現其工作。通過這種方法,你可以輕易地指出論文的創新點和其隱藏的缺陷和假設。)

This pass requires great attention to detail. You should identify and challenge every assumption in every statement.Moreover, you should think about how you yourself would present a particular idea. This comparison of the actual with the virtual lends a sharp insight into the proof and presentation techniques in the paper and you can very likely add this to your repertoire of tools. During this pass, you should also jot down ideas for future work.(這一遍要注重每個細節,應該考慮如何呈現自己的想法)

This pass can take many hours for beginners and more than an hour or two even for an experienced reader. At the end of this pass, you should be able to reconstruct the entire structure of the paper from memory, as well as be able to identify its strong and weak points. In particular, you should be able to pinpoint implicit assumptions, missing citations to relevant work, and potential issues with experimental or analytical techniques. (這一遍會佔用初學者很多時間,完成這一遍後，應該能通過記憶重構整篇論文的結構並指出論文的優點缺點。特別地，你應該能確立隱含的假設，缺失的工作引用和實驗和分析中的潛在問題)

Doing a Literature survey

閱讀論文的方法同樣適用於文獻調查，什麼樣的論文需要讀，同樣用三步法。

1. First, use an academic search engine such as Google Scholar or CiteSeer and some well-chosen keywords to find three to five recent highly-cited papers in the area. Do one pass on each paper to get a sense of the work, then read their related work sections. You will find a thumbnail summary of the recent work, and perhaps, if you are lucky, a pointer to a recent survey paper. If you can find such a survey, you are done. Read the survey, congratulating yourself on your good luck(首先,通過文獻檢索找到近3-5年該領域的高引論文，在每篇論文上讀一遍並讀他們的related work。你會找到最近工作的概要，幸運的話能找到survey)
2. Otherwise, in the second step, find shared citations and repeated author names in the bibliography. These are the key papers and researchers in that area. Download the key papers and set them aside. Then go to the websites of the key researchers and see where they’ve published recently. That will help you identify the top conferences in that field because the best researchers usually publish in the top conferences (找到重複引用的作者名字，他們的論文是該領域的重要工作。下載核心的論文並放在一邊,訪問他們的網站並看他們最近的發表工作,這將幫助你識別該領域的頂級會議)
3. The third step is to go to the website for these top conferences and look through their recent proceedings. A quick scan will usually identify recent high-quality related work. These papers, along with the ones you set aside earlier, constitute the first version of your survey. Make two passes through these papers. If they all cite a key paper that you did not find earlier, obtain and read it, iterating as necessary (訪問這些頂級會議的網站並檢視最近的會議記錄。快速掃描並找出最近的高質量相關工作，這些論文和之前你放在旁邊的論文構成你survey的第一個版本，重複兩輪，如果它們都引用你之前沒找到的論文，去把他找出來並閱讀。)

Related work

If you are reading a paper to do a review, you should also read Timothy Roscoe’s paper on \Writing reviews for systems conferences" [3]. If you’re planning to write a technical paper, you should refer both to Henning Schulzrinne’s comprehensive web site [4] and George Whitesides’s excellent overview of the process [5]. Finally, Simon Peyton Jones has a website that covers the entire spectrum of research skills [2].Iain H. McLean of Psychology, Inc. has put together a downloadable ‘review matrix’ that simplifies paper reviewing using the three-pass approach for papers in experimental psychology[1], which can probably be used, with minor modifications, for papers in other areas.

References

[1] I.H. McLean, \Literature Review Matrix,"
http://psychologyinc.blogspot.com/
[2] S. Peyton Jones, \Research Skills,"
http://research.microsoft.com/en
us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a
talk.htm
[3] T. Roscoe, \Writing Reviews for Systems Conferences,"
http://people.inf.ethz.ch/troscoe/pubs/review-writing.pdf
[4] H. Schulzrinne, \Writing Technical Articles,"
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/∼hgs/etc/writing-style.html
[5] G.M. Whitesides, \Whitesides’ Group: Writing a Paper,"
http://www.ee.ucr.edu/∼rlake/Whitesides writing res paper.