How to read papers

[CharonY]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Sometimes they will insist you publish in a different journal (e.g. Physical Review Letters has a length limit; longer articles have to be submitted to the appropriate Physical Review journal, such as Phys Rev A for atomic/molecular/optical physics)

For sure. There are a plethora of journals catering to specific needs and their formats (and content) are reflective of it.

 

On 12/10/2024 at 8:18 PM, swansont said:

You are getting the word out to the audience that can understand and possibly use your work. Work that’s often on the cutting edge.

One important element of it is is that original papers are often a discussion platform, where evidence for competing hypotheses are presented and discussed.

[studiot]

11 hours ago, Trurl said:

Is this publisher controlling the format the mathematical equivalent of when Stephen King writes a book and the editors reformat it? Stephen King doesn’t even have creative freedom when it comes to formatting.

No I was just told that I had to fit it into one and a half pages.

 

11 hours ago, Trurl said:

As a side note when was the Unit Circle introduced to trigonometry? My high school teacher said that he didn’t have the Unit Circle instead they used the triangle definition. He would have been in high school in the mid 1960’s.

 

Perhaps your teacher was recalling the traditional introduction to trigonometry.

Traditionally this has been by way of  acute angles in triangles first, this means that you already 'know' what a sine cosine and tangent are.

Then extending the definition to obtuse angles in triangles.

(Acute angles are less than 90 and obtuse ones are between 90 and 180.)

Then extending further to angles of any size is introduced by a rotating arm that may be some radius or a unit.

 

A simple version of the circle explanation has been known since the ancient Greeks, and we have followed their route from Euclidian Geometry, which is taught before trigonometry.

[Trurl]

On 12/11/2024 at 11:31 PM, CharonY said:

What do you mean? There are tons of books on writing research papers. There are general books on the craft of paper writing and specialized ones for each discipline.

I mean it is like me when I wanted to get back into shape. I watched a total of 8 exercise videos and didn't lose a pound.

 

On 12/10/2024 at 6:38 PM, CharonY said:

I suspect you would change your mind if you have actually seen how records are done in the lab.

Well you are right, I have no lab experience other than undergraduate. The nearest lab to me would probably one of the universities. But my entire reason to read research papers is to get data and ideas that is otherwise not available to me. The internet makes it more accessible and there are many ideas on Wolfram.com. And it is the reason I am replying to a message board.

I just quit a previous math problem. And I wanted to work with series which are simple to see, but a challenge to describe. I wanted to read medical journals, because I know nothing of math research in biology. I was thinking about taking some course in computational science, because that is what I was doing as a hobby.

 

On 12/13/2024 at 12:37 PM, studiot said:

Perhaps your teacher was recalling the traditional introduction to trigonometry.

 

Yes, when I was in trig we started with the Unit Circle. As I recall, he said they did not use the Unit Circle in their studies. I don't know why it wasn't included in his high school curriculum.

 

BTW I did order the book. $6 used on Amazon. I like the fact that it talks about medical research also. I probably can't follow most medical journal papers, but looking for patterns in data can be done by anyone. In my previous (hobby) project I made a lot of abstract ideas which could be good or bad. But I think that an introduction to biology would force me to work with more application based data.

 

 

 

 

[KJW]

The way I see it, Wikipedia (or other encyclopedia) articles, textbooks, and research papers are distinct sources of information in terms of their scope and purpose. They are not interchangeable. For example, if you want to learn about a broad subject, then you should study a textbook, not a Wikipedia (or other encyclopedia) article, and not a research paper. It is not about the quality of the information, as each of the above sources can be considered high quality sources of scientific information. Nor can it really be said that it is about the assumed level of knowledge of the reader. It is more subtle than that. A textbook comprehensively covers a subject in way that is specifically designed to teach a student about the subject and may include worked problems or problems to be solved. By contrast, research papers are about specific research topics, covering why the research is being done and the various experimental procedures and results of the research. The target audience may be interested in the particular research topic, or they may simply be interested in some particular aspect of the experimental procedure. For example, a chemist might only be interested in the procedure for synthesising a specific compound used in the research without any interest in the research topic itself. I think a scientist would consider themselves lucky if the entirety of their research papers makes it to a paragraph of a textbook. A Wikipedia (or other encyclopedia) article is in some sense intermediate between a textbook and a research paper, but not really a substitute for either. For specific topics, a Wikipedia article will provide more detail than a textbook but isn't organised in a way that facilitates learning for students. On the other hand, a Wikipedia article does not provide sufficient detail required by a researcher. For example, although Wikipedia does provide synthesis pathways for specific compounds, it doesn't provide specific procedures for each of the steps. Nor does it cover as many compounds as the chemical literature, focusing more on compounds of general interest rather than any compound that has ever been made (and published).

 

[Trurl]

On 12/14/2024 at 11:55 PM, KJW said:

 

The way I see it, Wikipedia (or other encyclopedia) articles, textbooks, and research papers are distinct sources of information in terms of their scope and purpose.

 

KJW, I think that is a fair and accurate description. All sources are helpful. I will be reading a book to learn how to read research papers while looking up unknown facts on Wikipedia.

I will try to improve my game reading research papers. I thought that in graduate school you did original research and defended it in order to submit to publication.

If you could submit a paper to a publication and it gets accepted could you skip the graduate studies?