How to Read a Paper

http://cva.stanford.edu/ee482a/scribed/lect03.pdf

Professor Dally was getting requests on tips for reading papers, so he went
over  his method in class:

1. Before diving in, think about what your goals are, and what you want to
get out of the paper. You need to approach the reading with an aim to extract
info; you may want to target specifc areas of the paper in case you are
looking for something particular. Keeping these objectives in hand will
help you while reading.

2. Read the abstract first. This should be an advertisement for the paper.

3. Read the conclusions. Figure out what the authors accomplished, so you
know what their goals were.

4. Find the "paper overview" section in the introduction and read it if you
need to. If you don't know about a certain topic, you may find background
material here.

5. Make a quick first pass through the paper, so you understand their
presentation of the topics. Figure out how the equations fit into the
discussion, but don't try to understand the math. On the second pass,
read the paper more carefully.

6. Highlight important parts of a paragraph so you don't have to reread the
entire paragraph each time. This helps in class discussions as well.

7. Write down an outline as you go- this will help you remember what you
have read. You can refer back to this outline as you go through the paper.

8. Look up key references if you are looking for a particular topic. This
paper may not have what you are looking for, but it may build on top of a
a topic you need to research. In the library, you can find guides that list
forward references for each paper, which may also be useful in your quest.