Read a research paper effectively | Little known AI tools and tricks!

Summary

The video provides strategies for quickly and effectively reading research papers, essential for PhD students and researchers. It covers tools like Connected Papers, Research Rabbit, and Lateral.io to help find relevant papers efficiently. The speaker emphasizes starting with review papers, scanning titles, abstracts, and figures, and using AI tools to uncover related work. The method includes focusing on key sections like conclusions and discussion first, before delving into the methods, making the process faster and more productive. The video also promotes the speaker's newsletter and academic writing resources.

Takeaways

• 📚 Reading research papers quickly and effectively is essential during a PhD and research.
• 🔍 There are two primary reasons for reading papers: to find relevant research for your work or to quickly find citations.
• 🔑 Identifying the most impactful papers in your field is crucial for efficient research.
• 🛠️ Tools like Connected Papers, Research Rabbit, and Lit Maps can help explore literature based on seed papers.
• 💡 Keywords are key to finding relevant papers, and tools like lateral.io can assist in identifying contextual links between papers.
• 📊 Review papers are a great starting point as they summarize large areas of research and offer many citations.
• 📝 To read papers effectively, begin with the title, abstract, and figures, then move to conclusions and results.
• 🔎 Skim papers for relevance by scanning titles, abstracts, and tables before diving into the full text.
• 🚀 Tools like lateral.io use AI to help you find connections between papers, making literature reviews more efficient.
• 🌟 Once important papers are identified, focus on understanding conclusions, methods, and results in more detail.

Q & A

What are the two main reasons the speaker reads research papers?

The speaker reads research papers for two main reasons: first, to stay updated on new developments related to their research and identify relevant methods or skills. Second, to quickly find citations needed to back up assertions or claims in their own research papers.

Why is it important to read research papers effectively?

Reading research papers effectively is important because it helps save time, ensures that relevant information is extracted efficiently, and aids in incorporating the findings into one's own research. PhD students and researchers spend a lot of time going through papers, so reading them in an organized manner is crucial.

What are the three tools recommended for finding and exploring research papers?

The three tools recommended for finding and exploring research papers are Connected Papers, Research Rabbit, and Litmaps. These tools allow researchers to start with a 'seed' paper and branch out to related studies in a more structured way than just relying on keywords or search engines like Google Scholar.

What is the role of keywords in searching for research papers?

Keywords play a vital role in finding research papers as they allow researchers to filter through the vast amount of available literature. Selecting the right keywords helps in identifying the most relevant and impactful papers in a particular field. Poor keyword selection can lead to missing out on important papers or getting overwhelmed by irrelevant ones.

Why should researchers focus on review papers first?

Researchers should focus on review papers first because they provide a comprehensive overview of a field, summarizing multiple studies into a single paper. This makes it easier to identify important trends and influential research without reading every individual paper in detail.

What is the recommended order for reading different sections of a research paper?

The recommended order for reading a research paper is: 1) title, 2) abstract, 3) figures and tables with captions, 4) conclusions, 5) discussion and results, and lastly 6) methods. This order helps researchers quickly assess whether a paper is relevant before delving into the more complex sections.

What is Lateral.io, and how does it help researchers?

Lateral.io is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to help researchers search for papers not just by keywords but by contextual understanding. It can identify connections between different research papers and highlight similar studies, making it easier to discover relevant literature and prioritize which papers to read.

Why should researchers read the conclusions before the methods section?

Researchers should read the conclusions first because this section provides a summary of the paper's findings and their relevance. By reading it early on, researchers can determine whether the paper is useful for their work without getting bogged down by the details of the methods, which can be time-consuming.

What role do figures and tables play in quickly assessing a research paper?

Figures and tables are important for quickly assessing a research paper because they visually summarize the data and results. By reading the captions and looking at the figures, researchers can get an overview of the study's findings without having to go through the entire text.

What is the benefit of turning your thesis introduction or literature review into a review paper?

Turning a thesis introduction or literature review into a review paper can help gather citations early on in a PhD. Review papers tend to receive more citations as they summarize large amounts of research, making them a valuable contribution to the academic community.

Outlines

00:00

📝 The Importance of Efficient Research Paper Reading in PhDs

In this video, the speaker emphasizes the importance of reading research papers quickly and effectively, especially during a PhD. Time is often spent searching for relevant papers, extracting information, and organizing it, which can be overwhelming. The video aims to provide tools and methods for speeding up and enhancing paper reading, including strategies for both deep research and quickly finding citations for supporting assertions. The speaker discusses how both in-depth paper reading and quick citation searches are common needs for researchers.

05:02

🔍 Tools to Find Relevant Research Papers Efficiently

The speaker introduces three tools—Connected Papers, Research Rabbit, and LitMaps—that help researchers quickly find relevant papers based on a 'seed paper.' These tools go beyond traditional search methods like Google Scholar, which may yield cluttered results. The speaker highlights the importance of selecting appropriate keywords when searching for papers, and mentions that good search practices can help identify the most impactful papers in a field, from which one can then branch out to find more.

10:02

📚 Review Papers: A Starting Point for Efficient Reading

The speaker explains how review papers, which consolidate and analyze research within a particular field, are great starting points when reviewing literature. These papers provide a broad view of the field, making it easier to identify key studies. The speaker suggests scanning the title, abstract, figures, and captions first to determine if a paper is relevant, before diving into the full text. Captions in figures should provide a clear summary, helping researchers quickly understand the paper's content.

🤖 Using Lateral.io for Contextual Research Paper Connections

Lateral.io, an AI-powered tool, is introduced as a way to search for papers not only by keywords but by contextual relevance. The tool helps connect papers with similar themes or research approaches. This tool is especially useful for organizing large stacks of research papers and identifying connections between them. The speaker shares that Lateral.io offers a beta version and encourages viewers to try it out for more efficient research paper management.

📊 Diving Deeper into Research Papers for Detailed Understanding

The final step of reading research papers effectively involves understanding the details. After identifying key papers, the speaker advises starting with the conclusions to see if the paper aligns with one's research interests, then reading the discussion, and leaving the methods section for last. The methodical reading approach helps researchers avoid wasting time on irrelevant sections. The speaker reinforces that reading papers in this order can help navigate dense and jargon-heavy research efficiently.

📖 Wrap-up and Final Advice on Research Paper Reading

The speaker wraps up by reiterating the importance of using the discussed tools and strategies to speed up the process of reading research papers. The approach involves letting the most important papers 'bubble up to the surface' before investing time in deeper reading. The speaker also promotes an academic writing toolkit and a growing academic community that helps scholars collaborate and solve problems in what can sometimes be a lonely field.

Keywords

💡Research Papers

Research papers are scholarly articles that present original research, analysis, or findings on a particular subject. In the video, the speaker emphasizes the importance of reading research papers quickly and effectively, particularly during a PhD or research work. They discuss how identifying the right papers and extracting relevant information from them is crucial for advancing one's research.

💡Effective Reading

Effective reading refers to strategies and techniques that make it easier to process and understand academic texts, especially research papers. The speaker provides advice on scanning titles, abstracts, figures, and captions to save time while focusing on the most relevant sections for a research project. This approach helps readers prioritize what is essential and quickly identify key information.

💡Keywords

Keywords are critical terms or phrases that capture the essence of a research topic and are used for searching academic databases. The speaker stresses the importance of selecting the right keywords when searching for research papers, as well as using tools to refine search results. They also mention that well-chosen keywords help others discover your own research papers.

💡Connected Papers

Connected Papers is a tool mentioned by the speaker that helps researchers explore related academic papers. By starting with a 'seed' paper, users can map out other relevant research. This is useful for branching out from a core paper to find additional resources that are critical for one's work, thereby streamlining the literature review process.

💡Lateral.io

Lateral.io is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to contextualize research papers beyond just keywords. The tool allows researchers to search through papers with a deeper understanding of content connections. The speaker highlights this tool as particularly useful for quickly identifying and organizing important papers related to a research topic.

💡Citation

Citations are references to other research used to support claims or provide background in academic writing. The speaker discusses two reasons for reading papers: in-depth research for personal use and quick searches for citations. They explain how certain sections of a paper, like the introduction, often require citations, which can be quickly sourced through targeted reading.

💡Review Papers

Review papers are comprehensive articles that summarize and evaluate the current state of research on a specific topic. The speaker suggests starting with review papers, as they provide a broad overview and can lead to numerous citations. These papers are also a great way to quickly grasp key developments and identify influential studies in a field.

💡Figures and Tables

Figures and tables are visual representations of data in research papers, often summarizing key findings or methods. The speaker advises scanning figures and tables, along with their captions, to quickly assess the significance of a paper without having to read every word. Effective captions can convey important details about the study’s outcomes and methodologies.

💡Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is referenced in the video in relation to tools like Lateral.io, which use AI to connect research papers contextually rather than relying solely on keywords. The speaker discusses how AI can be leveraged to enhance the search process, making it easier for researchers to find relevant papers quickly and effectively by understanding deeper relationships between texts.

💡Conclusion Section

The conclusion section of a research paper summarizes the findings and often highlights the significance of the research. The speaker advises reading the conclusion early on to determine if the paper aligns with one’s research needs. This helps avoid wasting time on papers that do not directly contribute to the researcher’s objectives, especially given the dense nature of academic writing.

Highlights

Reading research papers quickly and effectively is crucial for PhD students and researchers.

There are two main reasons to read research papers: to understand new knowledge in your field or to find citations for your work.

You don't always need to read a paper in full; sometimes you only need specific sections for citations.

Tools like Connected Papers, Research Rabbit, and LitMaps can help you explore literature beyond basic keyword searches.

Properly selecting keywords is critical to ensure that relevant papers show up during searches.

Start by identifying the most impactful papers in your field and branch out from there.

Review papers are great starting points as they summarize research and provide many citations.

When scanning papers, focus on titles, abstracts, figures, and tables first to decide if the paper is worth reading further.

Good figures and tables in papers should have captions that allow you to understand the research without reading the full text.

Lateral.io is an AI-based tool that helps you find and contextualize similar papers by understanding their content.

Use tools like Lateral.io to surface the most relevant papers to the top of your reading list.

Once you have the key papers, focus on reading conclusions first to quickly understand their importance to your research.

You can skip to methods last unless they are directly relevant to your research project.

Using these tools and strategies can significantly speed up your research paper reading process.

Reading research papers in a strategic way, instead of cover to cover, saves time and helps you focus on what's most relevant to your work.

Transcripts

reading research papers quickly and

effectively is so important during a phd

and research in general you spend so

much time trawling through papers

finding the right ones extracting the

information and then trying to organize

it all together can be an absolute

nightmare so in this video i'm going to

share with you the tools that you can

use to actually make paper reading and

sort of

understanding much quicker and more

effective just beyond you know just

reading the

sections in a certain order and there

are two reasons in my research why i

kind of read research papers the first

one is the typical research path where i

wanted to know what was new in the world

what i needed to know what was related

to my research

methods and skills that i wanted to

bring into my own research and there's

no getting beyond the fact that you do

have to then read some very sort of like

dense papers

in their entirety to really understand

how you can incorporate their research

into yours and find those gaps and

there's also another reason a less kind

of in-depth reason why i read papers is

because i just needed a citation right

this is just some of the things i said

in my introduction in other papers or my

literature review

my supervisor would simply say

needs a reference and i'm like oh okay

and so i go in i type in keywords i try

to find a paper that i can reference in

my

my introduction or my paper whatever i'm

doing and that is very sort of uh quick

because you you only have to look at

like one or two sections of the paper

and i'll be talking about that in that

in this video as well you know if you

just need a citation to back up what

you're saying or support an assertion

that you're making

it can be very easy and we'll talk about

the tools that you can use to find those

quick and easy kind of contextual

references

in this video all right let's get into

it this video is brought to you by my

newsletter go check it out at

andrewsdalton.com dot a u forward slash

newsletter link is in the description as

always and there when you sign up you'll

get five emails over about two weeks

everything from the perfect daily

schedule to tools that i use during my

research

as well as how to write the perfect

abstract and more so go sign up and

you'll get that straight into your inbox

i'll see you there okay one thing i

don't see enough channels talk about on

youtube is when you are reading research

papers effectively you actually need to

find the appropriate research papers

quickly and be able to kind of separate

them out from all of the rubbish all of

the stuff that's on the side that isn't

directly related and it can get really

sort of like confusing especially when

keywords um start kind of you know

overlapping some areas may use keywords

that are similar to yours and it can get

a little bit muddy so really it's about

finding the uh the the rose amongst the

thorns is that how you say it but it's

about finding the most important and

impactful papers in your field and then

branching out from there

there are three tools that i've seen and

i recommend

it comes down to connected papers

research rabbit and lit maps those three

tools allow you to kind of use a seed

paper and go out and explore the

literature and it's much kind of easier

than going to google scholar and relying

on search terms and ands and quotation

marks and you know if you don't know how

to search properly on google go check

out those modifiers those search

modifiers and they'll make your life a

whole lot easier so absolutely it relies

on keywords and when you're writing your

paper not enough

effort goes into really selecting the

right keywords and i talk about that in

my ebook

and how to select the right keywords

where to find them how to make sure

people actually find your paper when

they're searching

for your research oh what was that um

and so yes

keywords allow you to find papers and

then using tools like the three that i

mentioned you can also kind of branch

out and there's typically one or two

very influential

reviews or papers in your field that you

can use to kind of branch out so that is

how i would start make sure that you can

identify the most impactful papers and

branch off from there

once you have found your papers of

interest you need to make sure that you

read them effectively so this is only

the first step once you've got this kind

of stack of papers a digital stack if

it's on a file on your computer you need

an easy way to kind of sort through them

and i like to start with the review

papers the review papers are

really cheap ways of getting loads of

citations um if you sort of turn your

introduction of your thesis or the you

know the

literature review into into a

review paper it's a really easy way of

collecting loads of citations early on

in your phd so consider doing that if

you haven't already but uh once you've

got all of these research papers start

with a like a review paper a review

paper is one that looks at all of the

research in the field and kind of

combines it into kind of a meta

study and that is a really great place

to start and then from there you can

start identifying oh well this one's

important and you can go read it now

when you pick up a

paper

the first thing you do is scan it scan

the out of it like don't even worry

about you know following sentences one

thing i do is i just pick it up and i go

title abstract and just leave it at that

initially if the abstract interests me

i'll scan the figures and the tables and

i'll kind of look at the captions a

really great paper and figures

should completely have a caption that

allows you to understand the figure

without having to read the text of the

paper and so uh by just scanning title

does that interest you yes move on

abstract read that quickly does that

interest you yes look at the figures the

figures and the tables will give you an

idea of exactly what sort of research

was done and then a certain figure may

catch your attention read the caption

and that is how you kind of get a quick

overview of what this paper can offer

your research or

provide to your document that you're

writing if something catches your

attention when you have this first pass

over this research paper title abstract

figures and tables captions you can go

oh i wonder if in my other massive stack

of uh

research papers that i need to read i

wonder if there's something similar in

there there is an awesome new tool

called lateral.io

lateral allows you to search amongst all

of these research papers not only with

keywords but contextualized kind of

understanding they've got an artificial

intelligence that goes and scans all of

these other papers so you can kind of

start to connect the dots and then from

there if there are similar kind of

contextual understandings in these other

papers i would raise those to my top of

my read list and then start to collect

those together now this tool lateral io

they've reached out to me and this isn't

a sponsored video but they've given me

access to the beta

version and you can sign up using my

link below so go check it out in the

description because you'll get free

access and immediate access to the beta

version so go test it out i'd be really

interested to know how you use it and

what you think about it so lateral.io i

think that's going to be a valuable tool

for researchers who want to read review

papers journal articles and other kind

of texts quickly and effectively

the last and final step of reading a

research paper effectively is actually

just you know going through everything

else so once you've kind of collected

this information the process we've been

through is essentially allowing all of

the important papers to bubble up to the

top once they're there you've looked at

their title you've looked at their

abstract you look to the figures and the

captions you also then use that

information to go away and bubble up

other interesting studies using

lateral.io but now you've got this kind

of collection of papers that are very

important to you and this is where you

now need to sort of like understand the

paper in much more detail and really

there is no getting around simply

reading the paper um but you don't read

it from start to finish you can start

with the conclusions that's a very

important part so go to the conclusions

and be like okay does this exactly match

what i want it to say

is it super important to me and then

i'll look at the research

details so the summary and the

description and the discussion about

what they've done and then the very last

thing i read is the methods if the

methods

are related to my research then they

become very important but normally i

don't look at the methods until i've

read everything else and a research

paper is presented you know as this kind

of like structure but as a scientist as

a researcher you should not read it in

that order because it's just going to

waste a load of your time particularly

because research papers are dense

they're thick they're full of kind of

field specific terminology that are

confusing to almost everyone that's even

a little bit outside of that field so

yes read papers in this way use the

tools i've mentioned in this video to

make it quicker and more efficient and i

feel like that is the best way to read

research papers effectively

in this video i've just talked about all

of the tools and tricks that you can use

to read research papers quick and

effectively let me know in the comments

if you know of any other tools that can

help people or any other tricks and tips

that you've got for really kind of

speeding up the process which can be

incredibly long incredibly boring

and it's all about getting through those

things quickly the research papers read

them effectively let the interesting

ones bubble up to the surface and then

those are the ones you should spend more

time on and that is probably the most

effective way to read and then looking

at the title abstract then the figures

and tables the captions then the

conclusions then the discussion and

results and very last the methods that

is how you read a research paper and

save yourself a ton of time

if this video has been useful to you

please go check out academiainsider.com

there you'll find my ebook the ultimate

academic writing toolkit where i go

through everything you need to know

about writing peer-reviewed papers

effectively and quickly and it's very

much related to reading so go check it

out and also you can join my forum my

community where there's a bunch of

really awesome academics helping each

other get better solve problems because

academia can be lonely and confusing and

that community is growing quickly and

together we can help each other

you