MIT literature reading method for graduate students, simple and efficient!

Many researchers spend half their time reading literature and can quickly learn a lot from the work of others. Reading literature begins today. Once you start writing the paper, there is not much time, and the reading will focus on the literature on the topic of the paper.

During the first two years of graduate school, most of the time is spent on coursework and laying the foundation. At this point, you can read textbooks and published journal articles. The amount of reading required to lay a solid foundation in one’s field can be daunting.

A useful tip is to identify the most essential papers first. There are some useful bibliographies to look at, such as graduate school schedules and suggested reading lists for graduate admission procedures at other schools (mainly Stanford), to give you some first impressions.

If you’re interested in a subfield of your research, ask a senior graduate student in that field what the top 10 papers in your field are and, if you can, borrow copies.

Review the publications of recent years and copy those that are of great interest. This is not only because many of these papers are significant, but also because it is important to understand the progress of the work of laboratory members. Every year you should go to your university’s computer science library, read technical reports published by other schools in your field, and select those you are interested in and read them carefully.

Reading papers is a skill that requires practice. It is impossible to read all the papers in their entirety. Reading a paper can be divided into three stages:

The first stage: see if there is anything interesting in the paper

The paper may contain an abstract, it may have an introduction, but it may not have any or it may not be well summarized, so you need to skip around and see a little bit here and there to see what the author has done. The table of Contents, conclusion and Introduction are the three main points. If none of these methods work, you’ll have to scan through them sequentially. Once you have a general idea of the paper and its innovations, you can decide whether a second phase is needed.

The second stage: to find out the real content of the paper

Many 15-page papers can be rewritten to one page or so; So you need to look for places that are really exciting, which are often hidden somewhere. What the author finds interesting in his or her work may not be what interests you, and vice versa

Finally, if you find the paper to be of real value, go back and read through it. One question to keep in mind as you read the paper is, “How should I use the paper?” “And” Is it really as the author claims?” “, “If… What will happen?” .

Understanding what the paper concludes is not the same as understanding the paper. Understand, to understand the purpose of the paper, the choices made by the author (many of them are implied), assumptions, and the feasibility of formalization, thesis pointed out the direction of the what, paper fields involved have what problem, the author in the study of what is the difficulty mode of permanent strategy point of view is expressed by the paper, and the like.

It is helpful to associate reading with programming. If the reader is interested in a particular area, after reading some of the papers, try implementing a “toy” version of the program described in the paper. This will undoubtedly deepen the understanding. Know that other institutions have different ways of thinking and are worth reading about, taking seriously, and citing their work, even if you think you know where they are wrong.

The Three stage : Jump out of the paper

Often someone will hand you a book or a paper and tell you that you should read it because it has something to shine in it or can be applied to your research. But by the time you’ve finished reading it, there’s nothing particularly striking about it. It’s just barely usable. So the confusion comes, “What’s wrong with me? Have I missed something?” In fact, when your friend reads a book or paper, he or she sees something in it that is valuable to your research subject, catalyzed by ideas that have already formed in his or her mind.