- 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.
- In the second pass, read the paper with greater care, but ignore details such as proofs. In the second pass, read the paper with greater care, but ignore details such as proofs. Focus on understanding the figures, make a note of the import references
- 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. This pass needs great attention to detail.
Doing literature review can be divided into 3 steps as well.
- First, use an academic search engine and some well-chosen keywords to fi nd three to fi ve recent highly-cited papers in the area. Do one pass to each of the paper to understand the summary of the area. If you can find a good review, done for the first step.
- Second step, fi nd 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.
- The third step is to go to the website for these top conferences and look through their recent proceedings. Identify recent high-quality related work quickly. These papers, along with the ones you set aside earlier, constitute the first version of your survey. Make two passes through these papers.
The paper also mentioned some related references:
A website that covers the entire spectrum of research skills [2].
If you are reading a paper to do a review, you should also read [3].
If you're planning to write a technical paper, you should refer both to [4] and [5].
Also, a downloadable `review matrix' that simplifies paper reviewing using the three-pass approach for papers in experimental psychology [6].
