The idiot’s guide to reading a research paper efficiently.

Plow through, in 4 hours, the 20 PDFs of journal articles that have been accumulating on your ever-more cluttered desktop for the past 3 weeks.

Isn’t that what it all boils down to?

You and I could pretend that there is a higher purpose to reading into scientific papers but when it comes down to it, you want to get over with them and I want to get over with them.

I won’t pretend that this guide is about finding fulfillment or your passion or the next paradigm-shifting medical breakthrough.

I’m not going to lie to you and say this guide is going to make research paper reading a piece of cake either.

You deserve better than that.

So what is this guide going to do?

It’s going to show you the essential steps needed to extract the essence of any journal article within the shortest amount of time.

And this critical skill will empower you to meet the challenges of any scientific endeavor.

Be it a literature review for your journal club, a poster for the next medical conference, a full-fledged published paper, or that dissertation for your subspecialty exit requirement.

Of course, that includes submitting your coursework before the deadline.

If this sounds like some sketchy Do-My-Homework-For-Me cheat, it isn’t.

Because you’ve got a lot of hard work to do.

First of all, you need to know what reading actually means.

What Is Reading?

Covering lines you’ve already read with an index card to prevent re-reading.

Avoiding subvocalization and reading to yourself in your head.

Reading in chunks of 2-3 words at a time.

It’s only intuitive to measure reading efficiency in terms of its speed.

Words per minute, or WPM, as the pro speed readers call it.

And there is no judgment for thinking so.

We’ve been brainwashed into the myth that “faster is better” with the current educational system that prioritizes memorization over critical thinking.

This is even more so the case for doctors who have to be put through half a decade more of such “education”.

Many of us don’t even recognize that we’re in a corner with this kind of thinking, while others think that just around this very corner, academic success is waiting.

We expect to read faster the more we practice speed reading.

We will consume more material and gain more knowledge as we move up the academic ladder.

Eventually, we hope, we will have mastered the reading techniques, which will be rewarded by our education system with honorary degrees, prestige, and respect.

But rather than enlightening insight, the recurring theme here is that the faster we read, the more we consume — the less we truly understand.

I’d hate to break it to you, yet the old notion of reading as being able to scan through paper after paper at lightning speed is no longer the goal to pursue.

Seeking understanding is.

From this point of view, the common question of “how to read research papers efficiently” is simply the wrong one to ask.

How to understand research papers efficiently” would be the better question.

Because the goal here is not merely to read but rather to understand, to make connections between concepts, and to pollinate new ideas that push the boundaries of modern medicine as we know it.

Re-framing our goal in paper reading will free us from the fog, fear, and fanaticism so many of us feel about learning under the existing educational approach.

You Can Attain Academic Success With Effective Understanding.

I know that seems impossible but it isn’t.

It’s just that people who are able to do so don’t feel like creating free guides.

And the free guides that are out there always seem to make research paper reading look exceptionally easy:

  • Never read from the start to the finish.
  • Zoom in on the abstract.
  • Speed read the first and the last 3 words of each line.
  • ???
  • How I read a scientific paper in 30 seconds.

This guide isn’t.

This guide was written to make you think.

This guide was written to make you reflect on how you have been acquiring knowledge over the past years.

This guide was written to help you re-learn how to learn.

If these concepts all make sense for you to pursue, let’s move on to the gist of the matter:

Why are you reading this journal article?

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