Searching the Literature

When conducting a research, there are primary and secondary forms of finding data for analysis. The focus for this topic is on secondary data collection. Typical sources of secondary data are literature reviews, scientific papers, technical papers and other academic papers.

Guidelines to reading research paper based on ARMPD Lectures:

   Ø  Start-off by reading the abstract

o   Identify if the insight is similar to one’s research area

o   Read the conclusion if the paper is applicable

   Ø  Read the paper critically

o   Relate the paper to other papers to clarify the quality of information

o   or Check if it criticized

   Ø  Read the paper critically

o   Apply the finding to an interesting topic in the domain

   Ø  Summarize the document

o   Entire paper summarized to a maximum of two lines

o   Finish with a single page review

Keshav (2007) describes an approach called “The Three Pass Approach”. As the name suggests it has three phases when it comes to reading a research paper.

The Three Pass Approach

The first Pass

The objective of this pass is to decide if any further reading is required. Reading the title, abstract, introduction, conclusion and reference will indicate if the paper will be helpful for the reader’s research. The result of this pass should enable the reader to answer the five Cs:

                              ·            Category

                              ·            Context

                              ·            Correctness

                              ·            Contributions

                              ·            Clarity

The Second Pass

The second pass involves reading the paper with greater care rather than glancing through it, like done in the first pass. The second pass focuses on diagram, graphs and illustration. Keshav (2007) insists on taking an hour for this process. After this, the reader must be able to summarize the paper.

The Third Pass

This is an optional pass. It is only required to completely, understand the paper. Keshav (2007) phrases this as “virtual re-implementing” the paper, which is to recreate the paper with the original author’s assumption and compare it with the actual paper to identify hidden failings and assumptions.

Both the mentioned methods of reading a research paper are quite similar. As, an undergraduate, most assignments involve research. Unfortunately, I never followed a method to read a research paper. Usually, glance at a paper through and when something that is applicable to my scenario pops up, it is used in the assignment. However, I start by reading the abstract and if required the conclusion.

As a whole, during a lecture we were asked to reflect on a research paper’s findings. The approach was systematic and involved most of the steps that both the methods explained. Conclusively it proved to be productive and did not take all that long for an eight page, research paper.