How to Read a Scientific Paper Efficiently and Critically

If you are a researcher or plan to be, an important part of becoming a successful author of academic papers is being familiar with the literature in your field. This means you must read a lot of papers. In this video, I’m going to describe a strategy that will help you read a scientific paper efficiently and critically and to extract the essential information you need. I also briefly describe how to conduct a literature search and quickly identify papers you need to read in preparation for writing a class paper or an article for publication. Use the time stamps to jump to a specific section.

00:00 Intro
01:06 Basic format of a scientific paper
01:28 Get an overview
01:44 Scan figures and tables
02:05 Questions to ponder when reading the introduction
02:40 Questions to ponder when reading the methods
03:40 Questions to ponder when reading the results
04:12 Questions to ponder when reading the discussion
04:51 Questions to ponder when reading the conclusions
06:16 How to conduct a literature search in Web of Science

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Follow me on Twitter: @SciWri_KLMcKee

[umdospoucos]

I am an undergrad student in the midst of this adventure, and your video was very helpful to me. Thank you very much for the insights, Dr. McKee!

[AndyCorkum]

Thank you kindly. I really appreciate the very helpful and systematic approach.

[vanesho]

Thanks for your videos Karen. Love this idea about shearing information that is very usefull and not easy to find for free. Your work is very inspiring for me and it gives to me lots of ideas to share science through social media, one of my personal projects as a scientist who lives as a bikepacker.

[paradoxical]

As a non-native speaker this help me so much thank you Dr. McKee.

[ullintalulna]

Thank you Karen! The topic of building a paper and analyze it is a topic underrated. Such informative and clear pieces as yours are are very helpful! Best regards from Italy

[ohplease]

This is a GREAT video. So helpful my Research and Methadology Psych. class. THANK YOU.

[alessandrodonascimentovarg]

Dear Karen, thanks for the tips. Experience helps when selecting the most appropriate papers to read. Thanks for sharing your experience.

[muhammadzahir]

Thanks for sharing such a valuable experiences

[chauccy]

Great video as usual Karen! I'm writing my thesis so this video is super helpful. I've also greatly benefited from your how to write a discussion video. Thank you very much!
A question if I may. I found that after reading my writing for a couple of times, I cannot read it critically any more. How do you overcome that? I know one way is to put the writing aside for a while, but this isn't always an option when there are tight deadlines. Much appreciated! Thanks again!

[valem.m.]

I'm a student and this is so useful for me. Thank you!

[junayED.]

Thanks mam. This video is very helpful for me ❤️

[stanleykim]

Thank you for this great video. Would you share your method of reading a systematic review/ meta-analysis paper?

[sonnal]

Dear Karen, once again thank you for the precise and helpful video. At present I have my paper finished. But after this video, I would like to rewrite my paper.

[emmanuelbenson]

Very helpful. Thank yóu. Besides, the web of science database could you suggest other useful databases.

[kalam]

Thanks for sharing your experience with us. I am a novice in research field, your strategy and way to approach it, helped me lot.