I liked the 3 step structure, as it accounts for the fact that reading research papers is usually not happening in an end-to-end manner (especially giving limited ressources). In addition, it pictures well the iterative process of drilling down to the full content of a contribution. *
In the further readings, a more extensive post on the topic by Bill Grisworld provides a list of questions the reader should pose to a paper.
Two questions came to my mind when looking at this list:
- What would happen, if the authors of a paper minded this list and made sure their products lived up to the questions?
- What impact would it have on our research community, if reviewers 1) judged a paper at the earliest after step 2 of Mircea's reading process** and 2) structured their judgement according to Bill's questions?
My guess would be that, both sides contributing their share, we could get to the point of constructive feedback much quicker, so I'd like to invite everyone to give it a shot!
* Personally, the time boxes assigned to the steps are appealing to me, as I can use them as benchmark for my reading effort.
** I guess that this should be a sort of minimum requirement. Often, I feel, skipping step 3 really isn't doing justice to other's work.
