
Getting Better at Understanding Academic Papers: A Brief Guide for Beginners - itmouniversity
https://habr.com/en/company/spbifmo/blog/517418/
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mncharity
"How to (seriously) read a scientific paper"
[https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/03/how-seriously-
rea...](https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/03/how-seriously-read-
scientific-paper)

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srtjstjsj
There's not much here, but what little there is is in part 2
[https://m.habr.com/en/company/spbifmo/blog/517808/](https://m.habr.com/en/company/spbifmo/blog/517808/)

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didericis
The importance of looking up words you’re unfamiliar with is mentioned in part
2, and unfamiliarity with advanced terminology seems like it’s usually the
primary blocker for understanding a paper. At least it usually is for me.

When I try to understand a paper with a lot of terminology I’m new to, I try
to translate it into more colloquial, but still precise language.

It’d be cool of there was some sort of software/way authors could add
citations for advanced terms that could then be used to “decompress” the paper
into an easier to understand but longer version of it. Then they could still
write efficiently/describe the paper in the terms they use when working, and
people without that context could automatically translate it into something
more understandable.

Would also be cool if you could use something like that to measure how many
“external dependencies” your paper has so you can then try to minimize
them/get rid of unessential ones more easily.

~~~
dls2016
Leslie Lamport described a writing system like this but I can’t find a
reference.

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dls2016
Found it: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/how-
to-...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/how-to-write-a-
proof/)

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hprotagonist
i can’t recommend Kerav (2016) enough.

 _ABSTRACT

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._

[https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPape...](https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPaper.pdf)

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josephby
He’s also put up a page with translations into Chinese, French, Japanese,
Korean, Portuguese, Persian and Turkish and a handy matrix at [https://svr-
sk818-web.cl.cam.ac.uk/keshav/wiki/index.php/HTR...](https://svr-
sk818-web.cl.cam.ac.uk/keshav/wiki/index.php/HTRAP)

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PudgePacket
For further reading see "Studying Studies"
[https://peterattiamd.com/ns001/](https://peterattiamd.com/ns001/).

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srtjstjsj
This makes me sad. Why aren't the professionals getting better at writing
scientific papers? It's such a waste of effort to do all the research and then
fail at writing it up.

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djaque
Scientists have been getting by pretty well for all of the "writing failure"
that you're claiming.

I'm guessing that you think scientific papers are bad because you have a hard
time reading them. In reality, you were probably never the intended audience.
They're designed for another experienced researcher in the same field.

You can't cram a year's worth of highly specialized research into three pages
without it becoming incredibly dense.

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throwaway_pdp09
Some tech papers are just badly written.

