How to Do a Technical Reading Program
This approach focuses reading time by emphasizing the
planning of the reading program
before one sets out to read anything, and then continual maintenance of the reading plan.
1. Search for the citations
Back-chaining from current papers
Indexes
Specialized bibliographies
Computing Reviews and the annual indexes
thereof
Forward-chaining to papers that cite this one (Many databases enable this.)
2. Grade each citation
with a priori (that is, guessed) grades:
A,
B, C, D on expected relevance, based
on
Title
Author
Workplace
Journal
1,
2, 3, 4 on expected quality, based
on
Author
Number
of citations to it
Journal
Workplace
3. Sort into order on one variable within the other. You may want to keep both orders.
This yields you
a matrix of paper titles, with the most promising in the upper left.
4. Discuss the graded list
with an advisor; revise grades.
5. Confirm relevance for
the easy entries, at least the A
ones, revising as you go.
Many journals
are now on-line, so you can scan abstracts.
For books, copy
the title from your list into Amazon's Advanced Search page
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Search-Books/b/ref=sv_b_0?ie=UTF8&node=125552011
Then use
Amazon's Look Inside feature to examine Back Cover, Table of Contents, Excerpt.
6. Read from cell A1
outward fairly uniformly in both directions.
7. Write summaries,
critiques as you read! These often carry over verbatim into your dissertation.
.8 Maintain your plan. Insert into the existing list, by guessed
grade, new citations based on the papers
you read.
Occasionally, re-estimate the grades based on what you have
learned. Re-sort.
9. Quit reading in either
dimension when it becomes unprofitable.
Fred Brooks, 4 February 2008