How to read a scientific paper

How to read a scientific papernothing makes you feel stupid quite like reading a scientific journal article.

I Remember my first experience with these ultra-congested and aggressively bland manuscripts so dense that scientists is Sometimes caught eating them to stay regular. I was in college taking a seminar course in which we had to read and discuss a new paper each week. And something just wasn ' t working for me.

Every week I would sit with the article, read every single sentence, and then discover that I hadn ' t learned a single thin G. I ' d attend class armed with exactly one piece of knowledge:i knew I had read the paper. The instructor would ask a question; I ' d have the no idea what she is asking. She ' d Ask a simpler question-still no idea. But I ' d read the damn paper!

It reminded me of kindergarten, when I would feel proud after reading a book above my grade level. But if you had asked me a simple question about the book ' s contents-what kind of animal? How do encyclopedia Brown know that Bugs Meany wasn ' t really birdwatching?-i couldn ' t has answered it.

A few weeks into the seminar, I decided enough was enough. I wasn ' t going to read another paper without understanding it. So I took this week ' s journal article to the library. Not just the regular library, but the obscure little Biology Library, one of the those dusty academic hidey-holes only Populat Ed by the very wretched forms of life, which is, of course, insects and postdocs.

I placed the paper on a large empty desk. I eliminated all other distractions. To avoid interruptions from friends encouraging alcohol consumption, as friends does in college, I sat on an obscure Anteroo M with no foot traffic. To avoid interruptions from cellphone calls, I made sure it was 1999.

Most importantly, if I didn ' t understand a word in a sentence, I forbade myself from proceeding to the next sentence until I looked it up in a textbook and then reread the sentence until it made sense.

I specifically remember this happening with the word "exogenous." Somehow I had always glossed over this word, as though it is probably unimportant to its sentence. Wrong.

It took me more than 2 hours to read a three-page paper. But this time, I actually understood it.

And I thought, "Wow. I get it. I really get it. "

And I thought, "Oh crap." I ' m going to has to does this again, aren ' t I? "

Every week I would sit with the article, read every single sentence, and then discover that I hadn ' t learned a single thin G.

If you ' re at the beginning of your career in science, and you are May is struggling with the same problem. Familiarize yourself with the ten Stages of Reading a scientific Paper:

1. Optimism. "This can ' t is too difficult," you tell yourself with a smile-in the same-the-the-you-tell yourself, "It's not damaging to DRI NK Eight cups of coffee a day "or" there is plenty of tenure-track jobs. " After all, you ' ve been reading words for decades. And that's all a scientific paper are, right? Words?

2. Fear. This was the stage when you realize, "Uh ... I don ' t think all of these is words. " Slow down a little. Sound out of the syllables, the parse the jargon, look up the acronyms, and review your work several times. Congratulations:you has now read the title.

3. Regret. You begin to realize so should has budgeted much more time for this whole undertaking. Why, oh why, do you think-could read the article in a single bus ride? If you are had more time. If only you had one of those buzzer buttons from workplaces on the 1960s, and you could just press it and say, "Phoebe, CA Ncel my January. " If only there is a compact version of the same article, something on the order of $ or fewer words, printed in bold at The beginning of the paper ...

4. corner-cutting. Why, what's this? An abstract, any for me? Blessed be the editors of scientific journals who knew that no article are comprehensible, so they asked their writers to P Rovide,àla Spaceballs, "The short, short version." Okay. Let's do this.

5. bafflement. What's the hell? Was, the abstract supposed to explain something? Why is the average sentence words long? Why were there so many acronyms? Why does the authors use the word "characterize" five times?

6. Distraction. What if there is, like, a smartphone for ducks? How would? What would they use it for? And what is that Paul Simon Lyric, the one from "Can call Me Al," That's been in your head all day? How would your life change if you owned a bread maker? You ' d had to buy yeast. is yeast expensive? You could make your own bread every few days, and then it might go stale. It ' s not the same as store-bought bread; It ' s just not. Oh, right! "Don ' t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard." Is Paul Simon still alive? You should check Wikipedia. Sometimes confuse him with Paul McCartney or Paul Shaffer. Shame about David Bowie. Can you put coffee in a humidifier?

7. Realization that minutes has gone by and your haven ' t progressed to the next sentence.

8. Determination. All righty. Really gonna read this time. Really gonna do it. Yup, Yuppers, Yup-a-roo, Readin ' words Let's just point those pupils at the dried ink on the page, and ...

9. Rage. How COULD any HUMAN BRAIN produce SUCH sentences?

Genuine Contemplation of a career in the humanities. Academic papers written on nonscientific subjects is easy-to-understand, right? Right?

W hat A strange document a scientific journal article is. We work on them for months or even years. We write them in a highly specialized vernacular that even most other scientists don ' t share. We place them behind a paywall and charge something ridiculous, like $34.95, for the privilege of reading them. We readily accept their inaccessibility that we had to start ' journal clubs ' in the hopes, our friends might under Stand them and summarize them for us.

Can Imagine if mainstream magazine articles were like science papers? Picture a time cover stories with authors. Or a piece in the Economist so required, after every object described, a parenthetical listing of the company T Hat produced the object and the city where it is based. Or a people editorial about Jimmy Kimmel the could only being published following a rigorous review process by EXPE RTS in the field of Jimmy Kimmel.

Do you know "D call a magazine article, required intellectual scrutiny and uninterrupted neural commitment to What does it ' s even trying to say? You ' d call it a badly written article.

Those new to reading journals, welcome. Good luck. And we ' re sorry. We ' re trying to write articles comprehensibly and sometimes our subdiscipline are so hyperspecific that we need a Million acronyms. And sometimes we ' re attempting to sound like good scientists by copying the tone of every of we ' ve read. And sometimes we ' re just writing badly.

Quackberry. That's what you ' d call the smartphone for ducks.

How to read a scientific paper