It is good you labeled the stage you were (4th year PhD), the article misses this. I would say in the 1st year of my PhD the path was more like this: read the paper slowly top to bottom, understand nothing, now look for the part which looks the most interesting/approachable, read that again. Go to the citations of this section and repeat the process (recursive algorithm). Take note of any papers beiing cited by most of the papers, invest time in this paper. Look for papers citing the paper you read (not possible for cutting edge of course). This process takes probably 2-3 month. Then do own research on that topic, then go back to the paper and now things are clearer. Do the same process with a related paper in the field. Then one more. Probable now you are in year two and one can transition to your approach.
Bugger me, that describes the process I (not a PhD) have gone through trying to digest some papers so well it is eerie.
I've been damned lucky. The worst paper, the one were I had to read most of the citations and quite a few of their citations before I got it was http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/1997/papers/p011.ps and yes it took over a month before all the pieces settled into the right corners of my mind. Perhaps more accurately, it took months for my mind to create the right corners for the concepts to settle into.
But that was fine - I knew before I started it was the seminal paper on the subject, and so it would be worth whatever effort it took. The idea of wasting that inordinate amount of time going down that path with one dud after another makes me shudder in horror.
Haven't done a PhD but took some time off from work to read/research on my own and this year 1 PhD resonate well with me. Read top to bottom of a paper, feel the despair (feeling dumb) and look for part that I understand.
The process was utterly a time waste except for when the paper in question was a survey paper.
Indeed! Even after a decade you still have to do this for any new field, though you feel less anxious about it! I loathe and love journal club topics that make me do this!
cautionary tale from my CS desk - first dozen papers, just what was described above.. next, complete actual work using the knowledge - hey! I belong here! .. next, read a few more and decide "I can do this" and collect three or six dozen additional papers from the reference notes, new discoveries, and latest pubs, mix them all in the same collection of PDF (!)
now you have sixty+ complex papers, at least a third of which are not actually very important, useful or thorough.. and where are those original, carefully chosen ten you started with ?
side note - the "focus on the figures" reading advice does not scale, since most search is first and foremost with text. Which of the now-eighty papers (and growing, the field is hot) are the ones you cared about and understand.. ? "piled higher and deeper - PhD" indeed!
