The art of writing a paper means the difference between strategically reading a paper and pretending to do so. In my research, I follow three steps-
The First Step: The Rule of the Three (Scans):
Once I have saved all the documents related to my interest, I begin by reading the abstract, which I consider the initial scan. This is followed by reading the conclusion. Yes, you read it right. I leave the introduction for later. In almost all the papers I have read, the conclusion summarizes the introduction, results, and policy implication chapters. An introduction informs you of what the author plans to do in the paper while the conclusion is a cocktail of all the essential ingredients, including what the author has done, what the results were, policy-implications and potential applications for future research. That’s all I need at this point. This scan allows me to filter out all the papers which, at first, appear crucial, but on reading through, I realize, are irrelevant to my study. This technique saves a lot of time. The third and final scan involves the introduction. When I come across an interesting paper, I go through the introduction. Reading an introduction should not take so much time now since it is just repeating all the information I already have. In some papers, I’ve felt that reading the introduction is just a waste of time since all the information is already present in the conclusion chapter. However, it is best to do the first two scans and then read the introduction if the paper is relevant to your topic. The purpose of this strategy is solely to find relevant literature efficiently.
The Second Step: Connecting the dots:
By now, it may have become clear that this is an unconventional approach to reading papers. This time I skip the methodology section of the paper and focus on results instead. I highly recommend that you open a word document and make two columns – one that includes the title of reports you’ve read, and the second should involve the critical findings in those papers. The reason behind this is I try to use intuition as I read. Ideally, you want to enrich your article with something different. And to give your research a direction, it is essential to find links and connect the dots. There are two ways this helps. First, it helps me understand past research trends, and I can categorize different papers together. For instance, some authors may talk about how weather predicts sales; others may criticize the theory and claim that income is a better indicator than the weather. This may be followed by more recent studies involving newer techniques that suggest income predicts sales better with a specific model. In contrast, while seasons predict sales in-sample, it wouldn’t do so if we consider out-of-sample data. Once you understand how the trends have changed, reading every paper will start making more sense. This will boost your productivity eventually as you link different findings. Secondly, this technique will enable you to identify opportunities. Once you’ve understood the topic and how research trends have changed, it will be easier to discover what is missing. Maybe you can spot the gaps (the price of similar products in the market as a variable affecting sales, for example) in the literature and fill them with your work. This method not only saves time but also makes writing research papers more interesting. With these techniques, it becomes easier to stay hooked for hours and hours, and you will see results sooner.
The Final Step: The main deal (Methods):
By now, I already have all the papers that are vital to my study. This will be the most time-consuming bit as I thoroughly examine the methodology used and understand the exact techniques applied in those papers.
Once you have completed the steps mentioned above, you are finally ready to begin your experiment and run your model. Not only do you understand your topic much better, but you also are in a much better position to give a direction to your paper. It is only a matter of time before you complete your paper. If there is any advice you have, please get in touch.
~Dipen