ABSTRACT
Researchers spend a great deal of time reading research papers. However, this skill is rarely taught, leading to much wasted effort. This article outlines a practical and efficient three-pass method for reading research papers. I also describe how to use this method to do a literature survey.
这篇文章主要列出了如何通过"三遍法"有效地阅读论文，并且文章在后面一小节讲解了如何做文献调研。
INTRODUCTION
Researchers must read papers for several reasons: to review them for a conference or a class, to keep current in their field, or for a literature survey of a new field. A typical researcher will likely spend hundreds of hours every year reading papers.
Learning to efficiently read a paper is a critical but rarely taught skill. Beginning graduate students, therefore, must learn on their own using trial and error. Students waste much effort in the process and are frequently driven to frustration.
For many years I have used a simple approach to efficiently read papers. This paper describes the ‘three-pass’ approach and its use in doing a literature survey.
引言部分主要讲解了"高效读论文"这一技能的重要性，并且引出"三遍法"。
THE THREE-PASS APPROACH
The key idea is that you should read the paper in up to three passes, instead of starting at the beginning and plowing your way to the end. Each pass accomplishes specific goals and builds upon the previous pass: The first pass gives you a general idea about the paper. The second pass lets you grasp the paper’s content, but not its details. The third pass helps you understand the paper in depth.
- “三遍法"的要点是有目地阅读文章三遍，而不是企图从头到尾读一篇文章来理解文章。读完一遍后需要完成一定的目标，而本次阅读目标的完成是基于之前的理解；换句话说，我们读文章要层层递进的"啃”。
– 第一遍：掌握文章大意。
– 第二遍：抓住文章要点，并非细节。
– 第三遍：全面理解文章。
The first pass
The first pass is a quick scan to get a bird’s-eye view of the paper. You can also decide whether you need to do any more passes. This pass should take about five to ten minutes and consists of the following steps:
通过几分钟的迅速浏览，决定是否有必要再读下去了。步骤如下:
- Carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction
- Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore
everything else - Read the conclusions
- Glance over the references, mentally ticking off the ones you’ve already read
- At the end of the first pass, you should be able to answer the five Cs:
- Category: What type of paper is this? A measurement paper? An analysis of an existing system? A description of a research prototype?
- Context: Which other papers is it related to? Which
theoretical bases were used to analyze the problem? - Correctness: Do the assumptions appear to be valid?
- Contributions: What are the paper’s main contributions?
- Clarity: Is the paper well written?
– 仔细阅读论文标题、概括和引言部分。
– 阅读论文部分及小节部分的标题，不要在意内容细节。
– 阅读总结部分。
–留意一下引用文献，目的是识别出已读过的文献。
- 在读完第一遍后，要确定你能回答下列五个问题：
– 论文是什么类型的?
– 论文的相关领域和理论基础是什么？
– 正确性：论文提出的观点是有效的吗?
– 贡献：这篇论文的主要贡献（得出的结论）是什么？
– 清晰度：这篇论文是否陈述清晰？（你能看懂吗?）
Using this information, you may choose not to read further. This could be because the paper doesn’t interest you, or you don’t know enough about the area to understand the paper, or that the authors make invalid assumptions. The first pass is adequate for papers that aren’t in your research area, but may someday prove relevant.
第一遍的阅读很大程度地决定你是否需要继续读下去。第一遍下来，可能你觉得这篇论文的内容无法吸引你；又可能你对论文的相关领域不够了解而无法理解；还有可能作者的结论不够具有说服力。总而言之，第一遍的阅读很大程度上能让你决定你是否要继续研读这篇论文。
Incidentally, when you write a paper, you can expect most reviewers (and readers) to make only one pass over it. Take care to choose coherent section and sub-section titles and to write concise and comprehensive abstracts. If a reviewer cannot understand the gist after one pass, the paper will likely be rejected; if a reader cannot understand the highlights of the paper after five minutes, the paper will likely never be read.
顺带说一下，写出一篇能让读者看懂的文章是很重要的。
The second pass
In the second pass, read the paper with greater care, but ignore details such as proofs. It helps to jot down the key points, or to make comments in the margins, as you read.
在读第二遍的时候需要仔细些，但是忽略细节比如说论点辩证的过程。在这一过程中，可以略记下一些要点，有必要的话把评注写在对应内容旁边。
详细步骤如下：
- Look carefully at the figures, diagrams and other illustrations in the paper. Pay special attention to graphs. Are the axes properly labeled? Are results shown with error bars, so that conclusions are statistically significant? Common mistakes like these will separate rushed, shoddy work from the truly excellent.
看清论文中的图表，特别是数据相关的图。因为这些图的质量（eg.数据被恰当地表示）直接反应了论文的水平。 - Remember to mark relevant unread references for further reading (this is a good way to learn more about the background of the paper).
标记好你未读过的、领域相关的引用文献，以便后续的查阅；这也是一种了解论文写作背景的一种方式。
The second pass should take up to an hour. After this pass, you should be able to grasp the content of the paper. You should be able to summarize the main thrust of the paper, with supporting evidence, to someone else. This level of detail is appropriate for a paper in which you are interested, but does not lie in your research speciality.
第二遍的阅读应该花到一个小时左右。之后，你应该对文章的主旨大意及相关论点依据有了一定的了解。
Sometimes you won’t understand a paper even at the end of the second pass. This may be because the subject matter is new to you, with unfamiliar terminology and acronyms. Or the authors may use a proof or experimental technique that you don’t understand, so that the bulk of the paper is incomprehensible. The paper may be poorly written with unsubstantiated assertions and numerous forward references. Or it could just be that it’s late at night and you’re tired. You can now choose to: (a) set the paper aside, hoping you don’t need to understand the material to be successful in your career, (b) return to the paper later, perhaps after reading background material or © persevere and go on to the third pass.
有时，在第二遍阅读之后，你还不能理解这篇论文写的是什么。这可能因为你对这个领域或事物不够了解；还可能是陌生的专业词汇使你费解；也有可能这篇文章写得很差。如果出现这种情况，你可以把这篇论文放一放，稍做休息。接下来你可以决定放弃这篇论文的阅读，或者是阅读相关引用文章去理解这篇论文，又再者阅读第三遍。
The third pass
To fully understand a paper, particularly if you are reviewer, requires a third pass. The key to the third pass is to attempt to virtually re-implement the paper: that is, making the same assumptions as the authors, re-create the work. By comparing this re-creation with the actual paper, you can easily identify not only a paper’s innovations, but also its hidden failings and assumptions.
在第三遍的阅读中，你应该全面理解这篇文章。如果你做的是评论领域相关的工作的话，这更是重中之重。第三遍阅读的要点是尝试去重塑这篇文章：与作者做出相同的假设论点，再去论证它。比较你和作者的论证结果，你能轻而易举的辨别出文章的好坏 - 是否是严密论证的、有依据的创新。
This pass requires great attention to detail. You should identify and challenge every assumption in every statement. Moreover, you should think about how you yourself would present a particular idea. This comparison of the actual with the virtual lends a sharp insight into the proof and presentation techniques in the paper and you can very likely add this to your repertoire of tools. During this pass, you should also jot down ideas for future work.
这遍的阅读需要大量的耐心去理解文章的内容细节；你应该逐句话地理解文章内容；甚至你能用自己的理解清晰的表达出论文中的某个观点。这一方法和过程能很大程度上提升你的论证和展示能力。阅读过后，你应该写下一些对这篇论文的想法和体会，以便后续的工作。
DOING A LITERATURE SURVEY
Paper reading skills are put to the test in doing a literature survey. This will require you to read tens of papers, perhaps in an unfamiliar field. What papers should you read? Here is how you can use the three-pass approach to help.
做文献调研非常考验你的阅读论文的技巧，这种能力是建立在大量的论文阅读之上的，包括一些不熟悉的领域的文章。你应该读什么样的的论文去提升你的这种能力呢？在这里三遍法同样可以帮助你。
First, use an academic search engine such as Google Scholar or CiteSeer and some well-chosen keywords to find three to five recent papers in the area. Do one pass on each paper to get a sense of the work, then read their related work sections. You will find a thumbnail summary of the recent work, and perhaps, if you are lucky, a pointer to a recent survey paper. If you can find such a survey, you are done. Read the survey, congratulating yourself on your good luck.
首先，使用例如 Google Scholar或CiteSeer之类的学术搜索引擎通过合适的关键字去查找相关领域的、最近发布的三到五篇论文。利用三遍法中的"读第一遍的方法"把每篇论文过一遍，再利用获得的信息去识别和决定这些论文是不是你所需要的。(这里意思比较模糊。建议阅读标题链接的这篇文章，理解什么是文献调研。)
Otherwise, in the second step, find shared citations and repeated author names in the bibliography. These are the key papers and researchers in that area. Download the key papers and set them aside. Then go to the websites of the key researchers and see where they’ve published recently. That will help you identify the top conferences in that field because the best researchers usually publish in the top conferences.
除此之外，在文献目录部分找到引用和对应的作者的名字，他们就是在这个领域的论文和学者。之后把这些论文下载保存起来，并到这些学者的网站去看他们最近发表的成果。这些工作将你确定该领域的顶级学术会议，因为顶尖的研究人员通常在这些会议上发表论文。
The third step is to go to the website for these top conferences and look through their recent proceedings. A quick scan will usually identify recent high-quality related work. These papers, along with the ones you set aside earlier, constitute the first version of your survey. Make two passes through these papers. If they all cite a key paper that you did not find earlier, obtain and read it, iterating as necessary.
最后是去顶级学术会议的网站上浏览它们最近的研究课题的进展。快速的浏览能帮助你识别你想研究领域的、最新的高质量成果。在原先存档的相关论文就组成了你的第一版文献调研。之后，利用三遍法去阅读这些论文；如果发现这些论文都引用了相同的文献，有必要的话，再去找到这些文献进行阅读。
总结：
本人第一次比较正式地翻译论文，水平有限请见谅。首先，个人认为三遍法翻译地比较通俗易懂。其次，可能本人水平有限亦或者是该论文的主要目的不是介绍文献调研，在后半部分的文献调研翻译的不是很清楚。建议阅读科学网的这篇文章-"怎样进行文献调研?"辅助理解。后期有时间会进行更新。希望大家批评指导。
References
How to Read a Paper
