HOWTO read papers

Why should you read papers?

To learn new knowledge
- understand what it is
To search your research topic
- find what are missing in the paper
To prepare your paper submission
- test whether your paper is still competitive after reading the paper
To stimulate your brain
- discover new perspective for the same problem
Just for fun

How many papers are publishing a year in your field?
- 400 papers per year
Systems research: about 400 papers per year
- 10 top-tier conferences * 40 papers
- OSDI/SOSP, ATC, EuroSys, ASPLOS, FAST, PPoPP, NSDI, SIGMOD, VLDB, PLDI, SIGCOM, ISCA, MICRO, PACT, SoCC, etc
Security research: about 400 papers per year
- 4 top-tier conferences * 100 papers
- IEEE S&P (Oakland), NDSS, CCS, USENIX Security
Read one third of them
- Read 120 papers a year
- Read two papers every week

If you are reading papers on new to you, you first understand the landscape to understand common terms, key idea of major research, what are important aspects in the area.
First, read lecture slides.
- Good instructors deliver organized knowledge for newbies to easily catch up.
- They covers the classic, important papers, which is common ground of the area.
Second, read papers covered in the graduate-level advanced (seminar) classes.
- There are two types of seminar classes: one is designed to cover historically important papers (e.g., micro-kernel, exokernel, spin in OS design) and another is designed to address new important papers (e.g., Multikernel, Arrakis).
- Find out what are historically important ones and recently important ones and read some of them.
Third, check out papers published in the top-tier conferences published within three years in the area
- Check out the most recent research interest of the area

Do not read any random paper
- Priorities are top-tier conference papers followed by very good workshop papers (e.g., HotOS, HotStorage, HotCloud, SoCC, Systor, ApSYS), industry conference presentations (e.g., Linux Plumbers Conference, BlackHat), and top-tier journal papers (e.g., TOCS, TC, TPDS, TOS).
Read interactively
- First read abstract, introduction, and conclusion
- Then stop reading the paper and try to answer following questions:
- Q1: Why is the problem that the paper is trying to solve important?
- Q2: How will you solve the problem?
- Q3: How is this related to your problem?
Read critically
- After reading the paper to the end, ask following questions:
- Q4: What are main claims of the paper?
- Q5: Are all the claims are backed by evaluation results?
- Q6: Is there any result that is not explained or is contradict to the claims?
- Q7: What are not considered? How can you improve this?

Spend 5 minutes to summarize it including:
- Short summary of the paper (1-2 sentences)
- Short summary of the problem (1-2 sentences)
- Pros and cons of the paper
- One new idea to extend this paper