I feel like I have to find a suitable method for this problem. Some of the reading methods I have seen can also be introduced to you:
Take notes when reading articles. Reading notebooks can be classified and excerpted according to different contents, such as: progress, research methods, experimental methods, research results, etc. , and you can add your own comments. Notes should be summarized regularly (summarize what has been done in the past - be aware of it; how far it has progressed now - know yourself and the enemy; discover the strengths and weaknesses of others. Predict future hot spots and development directions - - Only then can you attack accurately and find your own direction and goal!) We must focus on publishing our results on SCI, so we must selectively mark and write down some classic statements. In addition, sometimes you can write down the thoughts and ideas that come to your mind and check them at any time. You may gain new insights over time.
Thinking diligently is not only to understand what others have done, but also to consider what others have not done, or whether their experiments are consistent with their conclusions, whether the data is unreliable, etc. Use diagrams to draw the author's entire logic, consider each one, and think with a challenging attitude. Read the literature with a critical eye, and don't blindly worship it. Some things are just pretentious, and you find that it is not the case. You have to do it yourself, and you have to use your brain. Know how to focus on the key points and find ideas when reading the literature. The main thing is to learn other people's IDEA. That is to say, read the literature and ask a few questions to find out where the technical breakthrough of the article is. For example, a lot of patents talk about many kinds of separation methods. The key is not to look at what they do first and then what to do, but to think about what the basis of this separation method is, why people would think of this method, and whether there are other aspects of physical properties that can be used. Use as the basis for separation.
Communicating more with others is an excellent way to improve yourself. Talk to your mentor about your ideas and exchange research progress in a certain direction in the field that each of you knows; talking with experts in related fields will inspire you much more than reading literature. Not only talk with the experts in this field, but also seize the opportunity to talk with the experts in other fields. Sometimes you can't read a word from the experts even after half a year of reading. Especially if you are an expert in other fields, he may give you a golden idea. Especially in China, experts are generally not very conservative towards outsiders. Group discussion is very necessary. Find a few like-minded people together. Everyone has a copy of the literature. Everyone will divide their work to read different literature, and then everyone will sit together. Talk in sequence and discuss with each other. In this way, the amount of literature will increase to the Nth power! ! !
Comparative reading papers with opposite views can be read as reference to taste the opinions of both sides. In addition, the comments by other experts published at the same time as the original work and the readers' questions after the original work was published should be read together with the original work. By comparing, you can see your own differences.
The most interesting thing when reading a paper is discovering "one draft and two submissions". What I mean is that many authors have written the same scientific research data into different papers with similar themes, or have made new developments and changes based on the previous ones. At this time, if your topic is similar to this, you will be in good luck. Because by in-depth comparison of the similarities and differences between these articles, we can discover the author (or scientific research team)'s different views on the same set of data, the evolution of ideas, or the "real" method that the author wanted to hide. After analyzing similar experiments by the same scientific research group, I quickly discovered the key reasons for the failure of my own experiment, and successfully completed the production of animal models in a short period of time, laying the foundation for further experiments.
Technical people must be good at comparison and discovery. It is impossible to report all the key points in some documents with high technical content. This is true for Chinese and English. For example, there are many samples in a patent, and the conditions or formulas of each are different. In this case, it is necessary to compare several similar documents to see where the main similarities are. This should be noted in the pharmaceutical and surfactant industries.
**There is also analysis from the perspective of the article:
1. Understand the structure of the article
Open most scientific magazines, you will find that Papers all follow a certain format.
Papers are generally divided into several parts, each of which plays a different role in the article. We first understand the standard format of the paper, and then look at what changes can be made under the standard format.
A paper begins with a brief abstract. The abstract generally briefly introduces the background of the topic, accurately describes the main findings of the paper, and connects the results with other research in the field. We will find that the entire article unfolds smoothly according to this logic.
Following the abstract is the introduction. Many magazines do not list this section separately. Introduction, the introduction, will provide some background knowledge so that readers can understand that the new findings of this article are at the forefront of the field. Generally, the introduction will first introduce the background of a specific field, then detail a specific direction, and introduce some of the findings and results that are directly related to the author's article. If it is to test a certain hypothesis, the author will explain here why the hypothesis is made, introduce some past results that support the hypothesis, and also make predictions about the results of the hypothesis. Many articles will describe one or several main conclusions of the article at the end of the introduction, so that readers can have an idea of ??the answers to the questions raised by the article. Like those articles in NATURE magazine that describe detailed and highly competitive articles, the introduction will talk about the author's strong interest in a certain field or expand on the background.
Most articles go directly to the Materials and Methods section after the introduction. Some magazines will put this part at the end of the article. This part is mainly to inform readers about the materials and experimental methods used in the experiment. In principle, materials and methods must be described in detail so that other researchers can replicate the experiment. In fact, the description in this part is highly condensed, and many materials and methods are borrowed from the author's previous articles.
The third part of the article is the conclusion. This section describes the experiments and results. Generally speaking, the logic of the results section follows the introduction. In other words, the questions raised in the introduction are the beginning of the conclusion. Beyond this, the structure of this section varies from author to author. In some articles, the author only gives the results without in-depth discussion, and the discussion of the results is placed in the discussion later. If the previous experimental results do not affect the reader's understanding of the subsequent experiments, this structure is more reasonable. In other articles, this part will give experimental results and discussions, and may also bring in other results to lead to the next experiment logically.
The fourth part of the article is discussion. This part has many functions. The first is to interpret the experimental data, that is, analyze the data and display the data. Any limitations on data interpretation will be made clear, and the line drawn between implementation and guesswork. The second is to connect the paper's new findings to other findings in the field. The main purpose is to show the paper's intellectual contribution to the field or to correct the fallacies of previous work in the field. As mentioned before, some authors will put the discussion of certain results in the conclusion part so that they can smoothly explain why the following experiments are done. You may think that in this case, the discussion should be placed in the introduction, but in most cases it will be difficult to grasp the importance of the discussion if you do not give the experimental conclusion.
Finally, papers usually have an acknowledgments section, where the author thanks other people for their contributions to the paper. This is followed by references, which lists the referenced articles and other work cited in the paper.
The paper also contains some diagrams. The data mentioned in the article will be presented in the form of charts. Figures and figures have legends that illustrate the details of a particular experiment. If an experimental procedure is mentioned only once in the text, the experimental details are usually described in the Materials and Methods, and the legends in the figures refer to the Materials and Methods. If a certain experimental procedure appears repeatedly in the paper, only an outline will be given in the Materials and Methods, and the details will be given in the legends of the figures and tables.
Paper structure transformation
Most papers in scientific magazines are written according to the format mentioned above. But sometimes, the conclusion part and the discussion part are combined into one part, mainly for the sake of logical smoothness, so that readers can understand the entire experimental research process with the explanation of the previous data.
As mentioned earlier, some papers in magazines will write the materials and methods section after the discussion. In some old documents, the author will also put the abstract at the end of the paper.
Science and Nature, the two top magazines, have completely different formats from the paper framework mentioned above. They have many readers, and many want to be their contributors. Therefore, there are many page restrictions, and articles are usually highly condensed. The articles in these two journals have no clear boundaries except for a brief abstract and references. In Science, the abstract is the summary, while in Nature, the abstract also serves as the introduction of the article. Experimental details are presented as endnotes in Science, while in Nature they are mentioned in figure legends or a brief methods section. Authors will try their best to put as much information as possible into a tofu-sized space. And more and more people are putting less important materials and most experimental methods as supplementary data online.
Many other magazines also have length limits, which require articles to be precise and concise. For example, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) requires articles to be within 6 pages, and Cell editors will shorten most articles. The abstract has a word limit, etc.
In order to comply with the requirement for simplicity, the author can only compress the paper, and generally omit the logical connection of the article. Moreover, the author compresses or omits the background. Without the background, it is difficult for laypeople to understand the article. In this way, non-professional readers can only use reviews or previous related papers to understand what the author is talking about. Finally, in order to save space, the author can only put all the important details in the legends of the charts
2. Read scientific research papers
Although we all tend to read like other articles Keep scientific research papers in order, but organizing your reading can save a lot of time. Usually, in order to understand the significance of the author's research work, we first read the abstract. As mentioned above, the background is also different due to the author's reasons and the magazine's requirements.
An extreme habit when reading scientific research papers is to think about what you know about the topic after reading the title and abstract. There are many benefits to doing this. First, so you know whether you have enough background knowledge to read this article. If you don't have it, you'd better read some reviews or textbooks to supplement your background knowledge.
Secondly, this will keep the topic fresh in your mind. The last and most important thing is that it allows you, the reader, to integrate new information on this topic into your previous work. This is a self-taught process that any professional will use throughout their career.
If you are very familiar with the field, you can scan the introduction or skip it directly. As mentioned before, the logical sequence of most articles is from introduction to conclusion. So we read it in this order, which means that we can skip the materials and methods section and come back to read it when we need this section. A reader who is familiar with the field and is interested in a new finding in the paper will jump directly to the relevant section in the Conclusion and then read the explanation of the finding in the Discussion. If the article is well organized, it will be easy to read.
Secret Words
Many articles contain unknown phrases whose meanings are unclear but have hidden meanings. We call them "Secret Words". Not all experimental data in some papers are shown to you, and some are shown as "(data not shown)". This is usually due to space reasons. This is acceptable if the author has shown in previous articles that he or she is competent enough to carry out the current experiment. The two other secret words are "unpublished data" and "preliminary data." The former means that the data is not qualified for publication or that this work is only part of a larger article to be published in the future. Different people have different explanations for the latter, but one explanation is that this experiment was only done once and was not repeated.
3. Difficulties you will encounter when reading scientific research papers
You will encounter many difficulties when reading scientific research papers, especially when you are not familiar with the field. As mentioned before, no matter how well-written the paper is, it is necessary to do some preparation before reading it.
However, although there will be many difficulties before the reader, most of them are caused by the author.
The main problem that makes scientific research papers difficult to read is that most of them are poorly written. Some scientists are poor writers, and some scientific researchers are unwilling to write and do not want to spend time and energy to ensure that the article is logically clear. Moreover, the authors are so familiar with what they are about to write that it is difficult for them to see the problem from the reader's point of view, although for readers who have only a little knowledge, these are indeed like a mountain that needs to be gnawed slowly.
Poor writing creates many problems for readers. The first problem is that the article is illogical. The article simply talks about the experiment, but does not say why this experiment is done or what kind of idea this experiment is to verify. Secondly, the paper is filled with a series of professional terms. Third, the author's writing style is not clear, and there is no distinction between primary and secondary. Major and minor issues are equally divided along the line of logic. But this way readers will not be able to understand clearly. A good article should put minor issues in the chart legend or directly explain that it is a side issue and has little relevance to the topic, so that readers will not be confused.
Another problem with reading scientific research papers is that readers are always obsessed with experiments. In the paper, the author refers to previous articles from time to time, and the reference chain is very long. This link will be connected to articles describing many experimental methods, and readers will not be able to tell which method the author refers to. Or maybe this link is unfortunately connected to a short article, the experimental description is super condensed, and it is completely unclear how to do it. What's more, the author doesn't write the experimental methods well at all, and readers can only be confused about how the experiments are done.
Other problems with scientific papers are caused by the indiscriminate treatment of experiments by authors. But if they are fixated on a particular experiment, the approach is narrow to other possible experiments that are not confirmed or even mentioned in the Discussion section. Another problem is that many authors cannot distinguish between fact and speculation, especially in the discussion section. This makes it difficult for readers to understand how important the facts in the discussion are.
The last problem in scientific research papers stems from the social nature of science. Many authors are ambitious and courageous and want to publish articles in first-class magazines. Therefore, they exaggerate the importance of their research results, and in order to make the article look like a good article, they add conjectures to the title. An example of this approach is an "affirmative sentence title" that summarizes the entire article in a single statement (e.g., "LexA is a suppressor of the genes recA and lexA"). This method has become popular, just look at the recent issues of Cell. If such an affirmative title is well substantiated (for example, by giving supporting examples), that's fine. But almost all such affirmations are guesses, just guesses. Impatient readers will think that the issues raised in the article have been well solved, but in fact they have not.