In my experience, academic papers are written by academics to be read by other academics. Depending on the state of the field, there often is a huge gap between the theory and practice.
Unless you are already an expert in your field, you may need to read many of the cited papers as well in order to know what paths have already been taken and why the present paper improves upon them. Unfortunately negative results are rarely published so there is an ever present danger of going down an obvious path which turns out to be a dead-end.
Unless you are already an expert in your field, you may need to read many of the cited papers as well in order to know what paths have already been taken and why the present paper improves upon them. Unfortunately negative results are rarely published so there is an ever present danger of going down an obvious path which turns out to be a dead-end.