Paper review checklist

http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/09/how-review-paper?utm_source=sciencemagazine&utm_medium=facebook-text&utm_campaign=reviewpaper-7757
I read this article and found convincing to create a checklist for reviewing papers.

I usually follow these steps:

1. Skim the paper. Highlight or add notes on potential problem/concern and interesting parts
2. Re-read the paper while following the checklist below and start writing the review comments on a Word document.
3. Make sure the review covers all of the highlights and the notes

Checklist

• [ ] Skim
• [ ] Ask questions
• [ ] Introduction
• [ ] Clear key ideas and contributions?
• [ ] Logic toward hypothesis makes sense?
• [ ] Related works
• [ ] Covers sufficient area?
• [ ] Covers sufficient papers?
• [ ] Logical critique?
• [ ] Model / Method
• [ ] Easy to follow?
• [ ] Innovative?
• [ ] Experiment
• [ ] Is the experiment setting fair?
• [ ] Discussion
• [ ] Is it critically discussed?

Writing review

1. summarize the contribution
2. briefly cover the background of the study.
3. assess the significance of the paper.

Finishing PhD

Some say that “finishing” Ph.D. program is like a marathon, while others say it’s like a set of sprints. Both have reasonable metaphors and it takes both strategies.

Why Ph.D. program is like a marathon:

• Every day counts. We can’t waste a few days and try to catch up later.

Why Ph.D. program is like a set of sprints

• We should not cruise through years. These are conference paper deadlines, journal paper deadlines, and the defense. We need short-term schedules and pace-making.

How to spend time
Morning (9:00 ~ 12:00)

1. Wake up early and start the best day.
2. Spend fixed amount of time for writing.
3. Refer “How to write a lot (http://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4441010.aspx)” book. I try to spend 1 hour/day for writing when I do not have upcoming deadlines. If there is an upcoming deadline, I would write as much as I should finish it during the daytime.
4. Spend fixed amount of time for reading papers.
5. Make sure to take notes and always think about how the paper you are reading contributes your paper. If you come up with nothing, stop reading it.
6. Work on long term tasks. Sometimes you work on tasks that require weeks to finish. It is important to keep working on it every day in order to make progress.
7. An important note is that these activities pay off after a long time. This means if you skip these by oversleep or something, you would not notice the effect. That’s why you need decisiveness to keep working on the morning activity.

Day (13:00 ~ 18:00)

1. Finish tasks (different from "doing"). Now it’s very important to finish tasks. Utilize GTD and PM tools like Asana to track your productivity.

Night (20:00 ~ after dinner and gym)

1. Write down final thoughts (paper, presentation, blog)
2. Work on MOOC program.
3. Stop rushing
4. Prepare for better tomorrow. Adjust the task schedule to make sure you can start your best day tomorrow.

How to learn skills

• MOOCs
• MOOCs are good opportunities to learn latest (especially computer science) skills
• Reading papers / books / tutorials
• Papers provide new techniques with the philosophy behind the new techniques. Books provide the history of the subject and it’s usually easier to learn techniques from books than papers. Tutorials allow you to practice techniques with clean datasets.
• How to read a lot of papers
• 10 papers a week
• 2 papers a day
• 1 paper / 30 mins
• Take a formatted note
• Highlight papers you will read next
• How to write a lot of papers
• Stick with writing schedule